Skip to content

Glossary

Terms of art

Kovent terms, regulatory terms, and the places the two collide. Where a word means something specific here, that meaning is authoritative for the rest of this site.

Kovent terms

Assay
The engine that validates a submission and computes its derived figures. Named for the metallurgical sense — testing a sample to report what it actually contains.
Bench
The supervisory review engine. Triage, assignment, checklist, queries, and the gated outcome.
Cadence
The compliance calendar engine. Materialises obligations and computes due dates.
Derived field
A template field the platform computes. The firm cannot supply a value; a submission containing one fails conformance. Contrast input field.
Docket
The case and enforcement engine.
Driver
A named, weighted contributor to a risk score, traceable to the submission, breach, or finding that produced it. See Prism.
Engine
A business component with its own boundary, control, and entity layers. Ten of them, grouped into five tiers. A module boundary, not a deployment boundary.
KADLS
Kovent Design Language System. See design language.
Obligation
The spine of the platform: one licence × one return template × one reporting period, with a computed due date and a state. A submission satisfies an obligation; a review decides one.
Prism
The risk scoring engine. Named because it decomposes a score into its components.
Registry
The firm master and licensing engine.
Return Studio
The configuration engine where the supervisor defines templates, rules, calendars, and scoring weights.
Seal
The audit engine. Hash-chained, append-only, written in-transaction.
Strata
The submission engine. Named for the model: immutable layers of record laid down in order.
Template version
An immutable published version of a return definition, with an effective date. The version in force for a period validates that period — not today's version.

Regulatory terms

AML / CFT / CPF
Anti-Money Laundering, Combating the Financing of Terrorism, Counter-Proliferation Financing. See returns R07–R10.
ATP
Alternative Trading Platform. See R25.
Beneficial owner
The natural person who ultimately owns or controls a firm or client relationship. See R10.
CIS
Collective Investment Scheme. See R22, R23.
CSD
Central Securities Depository. See R26.
CTR
Currency Transaction Report — a threshold cash transaction report. See R09.
Early warning ratio
Eligible capital divided by required minimum capital. Floor 1.00; a firm below it has a capital deficit and must file a restoration plan. See R02.
EDD
Enhanced Due Diligence. Applied to higher-risk clients including PEPs.
Eligible capital
Shareholders equity less regulatory deductions. The numerator of the early warning ratio.
Fit and proper
The assessment standard for directors, officers, and compliance officers. See R12.
Maker-checker
The control requiring that the person preparing a submission is not the person certifying it. In Kovent it is structural, enforced at the API.
PEP
Politically Exposed Person. See R10.
Regulatory deductions
Items subtracted from equity in computing eligible capital — illiquid or non-qualifying assets as the directive specifies.
Restoration plan
A board-approved plan to return a firm to compliance with minimum capital. Mandatory when a deficit is reported.
SECZim
Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe. The first supervisory authority Kovent is built for.
SMI
Securities Market Intermediary. The primary licensed population.
STR / SAR
Suspicious Transaction Report / Suspicious Activity Report. See R08.
UBO
Ultimate Beneficial Owner. See beneficial owner.
ZWG
Zimbabwe Gold, the reporting currency. Returns requiring a USD equivalent must state the conversion basis.

Terms that collide

Three words mean different things to engineers and to regulators. Kovent uses the regulatory sense unless stated.

Amendment
Regulatory: a corrected return filed after the original. Engineering: a change to a record. In Kovent an amendment is always a new version in Strata — never a change to an existing one.
Validation
Regulatory: checking a submission against the directives. Engineering: checking input types. In Kovent both happen in Assay, and every result carries a citation — so the regulatory sense subsumes the engineering one.
Current
Regulatory: the operative version for a period. Engineering: the latest row. These differ: the latest version of a rejected return is not the operative one, because a rejected return has no operative version until an accepted amendment arrives.