Policy
Independence and conflicts of interest
KeptIndex serves two kinds of customer. People who rely on the public record (investors, lenders, insurers, law firms, journalists and researchers) buy reports, alerts and data. Organisations that want to keep their own promises buy Kept Desk. Credit rating agencies and proxy advisers face the same question when they sell to the companies they assess. These are the rules that keep the record independent.
The rules
- No one can pay to change the record. No company or public body can pay to add, change or remove an entry, or to affect a KeptScore. Buying Kept Desk, a report or anything else makes no difference to how an organisation is recorded.
- Outcomes change only on public evidence. Every organisation, customer or not, uses the same corrections process and right of reply, with the same evidence standard. Every change is logged publicly on the changes page.
- The original date always counts. Every commitment is scored against the date first announced. A later revision is recorded as drift, not a fresh start. Kept Desk can help an organisation deliver, or tell people early that a date will move; it cannot improve a record any other way.
- Kept Desk data never reaches the record. What an organisation keeps in Kept Desk (drafts, internal dates, risk ratings, notes) is never used in public entries, outcomes, KeptScores, KeptIndex Pro alerts, institutional data or reports. The public record is built only from public sources, by a separate system.
- An information barrier for listed companies. A listed company's Kept Desk workspace may hold plans it has not yet announced. That information is never shared with KeptIndex Pro subscribers, data customers or anyone outside the company, and never used for trading. Anyone at KeptIndex with access to a listed company's workspace may not trade that company's securities.
- Reviewers are separated from sales. The people who review and decide outcomes have no access to Kept Desk customer data, and their pay is not linked to Kept Desk sales. While KeptIndex is small, its founder oversees both businesses; a finding about a Kept Desk customer is decided by a reviewer, not by anyone selling to that customer.
- Relationships are disclosed. When a paid KeptIndex report covers an organisation that uses Kept Desk, the report says so. Anyone may ask whether a named organisation is a Kept Desk customer by writing to contact@keptindex.org.
- Recognition is never for sale. Eligibility for Kept Certified, and any ranking or score, never depends on buying anything from KeptIndex.
Why we offer both
The record shows how often announced dates hold. Kept Desk helps organisations make dates they can keep, and warn people early when they cannot. Both push in the same direction: more reliable promises and better information for the people who rely on them. The rules above make sure the second never bends the first.
As we grow
Planned: Kept Desk will be run as a separate business unit with its own staff, and this policy will be reviewed each year by someone independent of both businesses. Changes to this page are dated below.
Policy first published 27 October 2026. See also: methodology, Kept Desk security, about KeptIndex.