Introducing Verification Requests in Factify: AI for Faster Hong Kong IPO Prospectus Verification

Product-Factify, Theme-Capital Markets, Workflow-Regulatory Compliance

In a Hong Kong IPO, sponsors’ counsel must complete verification of the prospectus content before the A1 listing application is filed, often with only days between “near‑final” drafts and submission. During this crunch period, verification depends heavily on issuers’ internal documents and working papers, which can be slow to surface and difficult to track across email, data rooms, and shared drives.

At the heart of this process are verification requests: the structured lists of supporting documents that lawyers send to the issuer to evidence and verify specific prospectus statements. For each statement that needs to be verified—for example, a revenue figure, a key customer relationship, a regulatory approval, or a market share claim—lawyers must decide which documents to request from the issuer and its advisers, and then track what has been provided and what remains outstanding.

Today, junior lawyers, trainees, and paralegals still work through the prospectus line by line, flagging statements for verification, preparing long lists of verification requests, and chasing supporting documents from the issuer and its advisers. This manual approach is inherently time‑consuming and error‑prone, and it places significant pressure on teams in the final weeks before A1 filing, when sponsors, accountants, and the Exchange are all demanding clarity and consistency.

Transforming the Timeline: From 20–30 Hours to a Review‑First Workflow

A comprehensive manual review of a dense prospectus section—such as “Business”, “Industry Overview” or “Risk Factors”—can easily consume 20 to 30 hours of concentrated reading, cross‑referencing, and drafting. In that time, teams must:

  • Identify which prospectus statements require verification.
  • Decide what supporting documents to request from the issuer (i.e. build the verification requests list).
  • Document the rationale in a way that will withstand internal and regulatory scrutiny.

Factify is designed to compress this timeline by shifting lawyers’ time from manual drafting to focused review. In internal tests, Factify’s agentic AI has generated first‑cut verification requests—that is, proposed lists of supporting documents for each relevant statement—for entire prospectus sections in about 1.5 hours, with users concentrating on refining and approving the output rather than building schedules from scratch. For ad hoc queries—for example, when a partner or sponsor challenges a single statement on a key customer, a material contract, or a regulatory risk factor—Factify can propose a draft verification request in about 1 minute, allowing the team to respond quickly without re‑entering the full document review cycle.

Transform Your Verification Workflow with Factify

To address the practical challenges of Hong Kong IPO practice, Wizpresso is introducing Verification Requests in Factify—a feature designed to centralise how your team drafts, reviews, and tracks the lists of supporting documents you request from issuers to verify prospectus statements.

Verification Requests create a single source of truth for your IPO verification work. They bring together:

  • Prospectus statements that require verification.
  • The specific supporting documents to be requested from the issuer and its advisers (the verification requests).
  • The acceptance criteria that define when those documents are sufficient.
  • The verification notes that record how each statement has been evidenced.

All of this is captured in a structured, auditable workflow that can sit within the sponsors’ working files. By automating the foundational step of proposing which documents to request for each statement, while preserving human judgment, Factify helps law firms shorten turnaround times, manage risk more consistently, and handle more mandates with the same team.

Here is how Verification Requests integrate into your existing workflow:

Intelligent, One‑Click Generation of Supporting Document Lists

Instead of manually circling every statement in a PDF or Word document and building the supporting document list from scratch, you can select one or more prospectus sections—such as “Business”, “Risk Factors”, “Directors and Senior Management”, or “Financial Information”—and generate draft verification requests with a click.

Factify’s AI:

  • Parses each statement.
  • Determines whether it should be supported by documents (and if so, what type).
  • Suggests a list of supporting documents to request from the issuer for that statement (for example, board minutes, contracts, bank statements, licences, customer confirmations, internal policies, or management representations).

This first‑cut list of verification requests reduces the need for junior team members to conduct line‑by‑line manual scans of the prospectus just to decide “what should we ask the issuer for?”. Lawyers can then focus on reviewing, adjusting, and prioritising the proposed document requests rather than starting from a blank page.

Tailored AI Guidance That Reflects Your Firm’s Practice

Verification Requests provide multiple AI‑generated suggestions per statement, covering both:

  • The types of documents to request (i.e. the verification requests themselves).
  • The proposed acceptance criteria for those documents.

Within the detail panel, lawyers can:

  • Accept individual suggested document requests for a particular statement.
  • Apply “Accept all” to low‑risk or standardized sections where the firm’s practice is well established.
  • Edit or override proposed requests to reflect the sponsor’s risk appetite and the firm’s internal precedents.

Over time, your templates, preferences, and past decisions can be reflected in the guidance Factify provides. This helps promote consistency in how your firm requests supporting documents across deals and offices, while still allowing for bespoke treatment of sensitive or novel issues.

Customisable Control for Complex IPOs

Complex Hong Kong IPOs frequently involve nuanced legal judgment—whether in relation to PRC regulatory regimes, connected transactions, VIE structures, sector‑specific risks, or unusual revenue models. Verification Requests are built to support a dual approach where AI handles the heavy lifting on the supporting document list, and lawyers retain full control.

You can supplement AI‑generated document requests with manual requirements for particular statements or sections, ensuring that expectations on corroboration are clear to the issuer from the outset. For example, for a single prospectus statement you might require:

  • Management confirmation and board minutes.
  • Independent industry reports and customer confirmations.
  • Additional internal records for areas where regulators have previously focused their comments.

In other words, Verification Requests become the central checklist of documents to be obtained from the issuer for each statement, with the AI suggesting a baseline and your team layering on deal‑specific requirements. This combination ensures that your verification file remains robust, targeted, and aligned with both regulatory expectations and your firm’s house style.

From Verification Requests to Structured Verification Notes

The true leverage of Verification Requests lies in their downstream impact on verification notes. Once your team has reviewed and accepted the draft verification requests—the lists of supporting documents to be obtained for each statement—Factify uses them as the blueprint for generating draft verification notes that link each prospectus statement to the documents actually received.

This forward linkage helps to:

  • Reduce reconciliation errors between the verification requests list and the final verification notes.
  • Maintain a clear chain from statement, to requested documents, to received evidence, to final rationale.
  • Facilitate internal review by partners, sponsors, and risk committees.

By structuring verification notes around the agreed list of supporting documents and the materials actually provided by the issuer, Factify helps teams maintain a consistent, traceable verification file that is easier to review, update, and explain if questions arise from sponsors, auditors, or regulators.

Built for Hong Kong IPO Standards and Governance

Factify is designed to augment, not replace, professional judgment. All AI‑generated verification requests (supporting document lists), acceptance criteria, and verification notes are fully transparent and editable, and lawyers retain complete control over what ultimately enters the verification file. The system supports the preparation of appropriately detailed verification records that can be incorporated into sponsors’ working files and aligned with internal governance standards.

As an enterprise‑grade solution adopted by financial institutions and professional firms in Hong Kong, Factify supports secure handling of sensitive IPO materials, including bilingual and scanned documents, and can be tailored to your firm’s templates and internal protocols. This allows teams to modernise their verification workflow without sacrificing control, confidentiality, or auditability.

Experience the Future of IPO Verification

Verification Requests offer Hong Kong IPO lawyers a practical path to faster, more consistent, and more auditable prospectus verification—particularly in the high‑pressure weeks leading up to A1 filing. By automating the drafting of verification requests (the lists of supporting documents to be obtained from the issuer), centralising coordination, and structuring communication with issuers, Factify enables your team to focus on legal analysis and strategic advice rather than repetitive manual tasks.

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