Why we publish what others sell

Jagelski & Partners publishes open comparison tools, free reference pages, and cost tables with real figures. Basic research belongs before an enquiry, not behind it. We are not paid to withhold that information. The institution or specialist partner that takes the case pays us, never the client. What they pay for is a qualified introduction built from a clear brief and matched to their expertise, jurisdiction coverage, and risk appetite.

A useful enquiry should not start from zero

A common advisory model in this industry withholds costs, requirements, and constraints until a discovery call. Publish little, imply much, and the gap between the two produces the enquiry. Much of what is withheld is public anyway. Most of it sits in fee schedules, statutes, and regulator handbooks. The adviser then spends the first part of the call teaching it to a prospect who cannot yet tell a regulated activity from a registered one.

That is a poor way to begin a working relationship, and it creates a practical problem. A business that cannot compare advice has no way to judge whether a route fits its needs or simply fits the adviser’s delivery model. In our work, the expensive error is rarely one missing fact. It is a sequence built on the wrong starting assumption. The most common one is a jurisdiction chosen before the activity, the customers, the shareholders, and the banking requirements have been looked at together.

We would rather receive a brief with the basic questions answered and the unresolved ones visible. Preparation changes the quality of the scope. Instead of reciting public requirements, we can focus on fit, order, trade-offs, and the requirements for execution, then route the case to the specialist best placed to deliver it.

Three things that stay open here

Three explorers cover the decisions that eliminate most options early, and none of them sits behind a form.

• Licensing. The licensing explorer screens 50 jurisdictions on licence scope, minimum capital, timeline, corporate tax, and whether banks will onboard the activity.
• Formation. The formation explorer covers 52, with banking access shown beside each entity route and the crypto-licensing route where one exists, so a structure is never chosen in isolation.
• Banking. The banking explorer covers 55 and puts the access constraints first: whether a local account is realistic, which type of institution will hold it, and how long onboarding takes.

None of them asks for an account, an email address, or a call. Behind the explorers sit the reference pages. Each jurisdiction profile runs to thousands of words and cites the primary sources it is built on: the statute, the regulator’s register, and the fee schedule, where each exists. Where a figure has a date, the page shows it. Read the scope beside each cost table. Statutory-only figures are not an all-in quote: professional work is quoted separately.

Where an institution sets the banking price, the page says so, and the rate shown is the institutional rate. No markup is added. The point is not to make every option look cheap. It is to let you compare realistic costs before you choose a route.

The business is qualified introductions, not restricted access

If the information is free, where is the business? Not in an invoice to you. The institution or specialist partner that takes the case pays us. The client pays us no onboarding fee, no retainer, and no other charge. That is what keeps the research open: we are not protecting a fee. Estimated professional fees still appear in most licensing cost tables, beside the statutory fees, because they are part of the real budget for a licence. Free research does not mean execution is free.

Scoping turns public facts into a decision. A reference page can state what a jurisdiction requires. It cannot tell you what your venture needs, in what order, and with which trade-offs, because that depends on your activity, your customers, your shareholders, and your banking requirements. In practice, scoping is the work of putting the structure, the licence, and the banking route into a sequence that fits the business. It also means being able to say why that order and not another.

The introduction leads to an independent specialist, and we say so. We are a strategy firm, not a licensed practitioner in dozens of jurisdictions, and we do not pretend otherwise. Execution belongs to a vetted network of local specialists: the lawyers, accountants, and compliance professionals who do this work in their own market every week. We match the case and make the introduction. The client and specialist then contract directly, and the specialist becomes the point of contact and owns delivery. You will know exactly who is acting for you before anything is signed.

The commercial model deserves to be stated as plainly as the costs. A recommendation is easier to judge when you know who is paying for it.

The research is free because the research was never the product. Clarity and the right introduction are.

A dated fact is worth more than a confident one

Reference material does not stay accurate on its own. A threshold moves, a transition period ends, a regulator publishes new guidance, and a page written eight months ago is now confidently wrong. An undated page never looks stale, which is a convenience for the publisher and a cost to the reader.

Review schedules govern the reference pages instead. Every material fact sits on a schedule weighted by how likely it is to change. The Regulatory Radar shows that work in public: what changed, what is pending, and what we re-verified and when. In practice, the facts that move most often are the ones a first-time applicant checks least: transition deadlines, fee schedules, and whether a regulator is still accepting a category of application. A visible date does not make a fact permanent. It tells you when the evidence was last checked, so you do not have to guess.

Emma answers from the same evidence

Reference pages are organised by jurisdiction, by service, and by comparison. Your question rarely fits inside one of them. A licensing choice affects the formation, the structure affects banking, and the order changes what has to happen next.

That is what Emma is for. She is our AI advisor. She is designed to ground answers in the same published jurisdiction data used by the pages and explorers, and to reply in your own language. Ask Emma the questions a useful brief needs to answer: which jurisdictions fit an exchange with EU customers, what a realistic timeline to a licence looks like, where banking will be the constraint. She is designed to explain what the data supports and flag missing information.

Case-specific judgement remains with the independent specialist. Emma is designed to help you organise the question, test a shortlist against the published material, and identify the points that need that judgement; her answers do not replace it.

Use the site in the order we would use it

Start with the activity, not the destination. What you do determines which permission you need, and the jurisdiction comes after. Put the shortlist through the explorers and read the full profiles of the two or three jurisdictions that remain. Check the Radar for anything changing there, and put the awkward questions to Emma. When what remains is a genuine choice between structures, sequences, or trade-offs the public material cannot settle, send us a structured brief. Jagelski & Partners will use it to scope the sequence and identify the specialist who should take the case.

By then, you will know more than most prospects in this industry are ever allowed to. That preparation makes the handoff more useful: the specialist can focus on case-specific judgement and execution, while the published facts remain available to everyone.