Case study
How Fineco Bank scaled partner compliance with BIQUO
From manual spot checks to proactive, dynamic and traceable monitoring of every partner, page and affiliate link, with BIQUO.
FinecoBank is one of Europe’s leading FinTech banks. Listed on the FTSE MIB, it offers a business model that is unique in Europe, combining best-in-class platforms with a large network of financial advisors, delivering banking, credit, trading and investment services from a single account, through transactional and advisory platforms built on proprietary technology.
Distribution is central to that model. In 2023 Fineco added a new channel, launching its affiliate marketing activities and building a first network of digital partners to broaden the online distribution of its products and services.
In the early phase, the number of partners was still small and content control could be handled through manual verification. The team monitored the main sites and stepped in whenever information needed updating or content needed correcting.
The network outgrew manual checks
Through 2024 the program accelerated sharply: the number of partners grew by roughly 100%, significantly expanding Fineco’s presence across financial sites, comparison portals, vertical portals and third-party editorial content.
As the network expanded, control became progressively more complex. Every new partner introduced additional pages, content and affiliate links to verify, making complete, continuous coverage difficult to guarantee through manual activity alone.
The complexity wasn’t limited to new content. Over time, a back catalogue of articles, reviews, comparisons and informational pages had accumulated, still accessible online, but in some cases carrying information that was no longer current or not fully aligned with the latest guidelines. Published content doesn’t stay compliant: a page is accurate the day it goes live; then the offer changes and the page stays online, still live, still ranking.
In parallel, Fineco needed greater visibility on the actual perimeter of its affiliate network. Some sites were using affiliate links without appearing among the declared or approved partners, meaning the truly active network was potentially wider than the officially known one.
The need was twofold:
- Monitor the compliance of every piece of published content.
- Know precisely who is actually promoting the brand through affiliate links.
The solution
Following its vendor due diligence process, Fineco adopted BIQUO to automate the monitoring of its affiliate ecosystem. The platform was configured around the operational needs and guidelines defined by the Fineco team, customising the control categories, the flagging criteria and the evidence to collect.
The project started from an initial set of partners and domains indicated by Fineco, but monitoring was never bound to a static list. As activities progressed, BIQUO progressively extended coverage to further relevant sites, surfaced by the analyses or reported by the team. The control perimeter was adapted to the actually active network, including domains that weren’t part of the initial census.
BIQUO continuously analysed partners, sites, pages and affiliate links, flagging:
- outdated content in need of an update;
- potential non-compliance against the defined guidelines;
- claims and wording requiring closer review;
- incomplete or insufficiently clear disclosures;
- incorrect brand usage;
- affiliate links used by sites not yet declared.
Every flag was accompanied by its evidence, allowing the team to quickly locate the page involved, understand the nature of the issue and prioritise the necessary interventions. BIQUO turned a process based on manual, fragmented checks into a centralised, continuous and traceable monitoring system.
/ Affiliate monitoring FINECO The impact
With BIQUO, Fineco was able to match the growth of its affiliate channel with a more scalable control model. The team gained a more complete view of active partners, published content and the pages requiring intervention, and dynamically extending the monitoring perimeter made it possible to represent the real affiliate ecosystem with far greater accuracy, beyond the limits of an initial domain list.
The evidence collected by the platform allowed review activity to focus on the most relevant cases, reducing the weight of manual checks and making it easier to document the verifications carried out.
The result is a compliance process that is more complete, verifiable and ready to support the evolution of the affiliate program, while maintaining the level of control required of a financial institution.
“As the affiliate channel grew, we needed a more complete and scalable control process. BIQUO helped us monitor the network continuously, identify outdated content or content requiring review, and gain better visibility on how our affiliate links are used.”