A straightforward approach is to use freely available information from the internet. Searching against a customer name on the internet can lead to plenty of data but more focused searching is recommended. For example, searching news feeds and “reputable” websites and discounting less reliable sources, returns data in line with your internal risk appetite.

Noise words are common words within a company or organisation name which will be ignored when the matching process is takingplace on the screening system, so that key name words will be the focus. Mostscreening systems allow you to configure a set of noise words, or at leastinclude a preconfigured set.

Understandingthe relative risk of doing business with another country has never been so fundamental to banking. We all have impressions of how risky other countries are, based on anecdotes, news stories, and personal prejudice.

Our client, a payments company, had concerns that their transaction monitoring was not effective & could be opening them up to the risk of failing to identify suspicious activity. They were also concerned about their regulatory risk should a regulator investigate & find them to be sub-standard.

A bank performs sanctions screening using some third-party software. Although the screening system appears to be working in that output is created, but the bank quite rightly wants to know if its system: addresses the bank’s risk, is effective, is efficient, is comparable to peer banking institutions.

A law firm had been appointed as a Skilled Person to conduct a Section 166 review of various financial crime processes at an e-payments company. The law firm required support and subject matter expertise to assess the adequacy and robustness of the company’s sanctions monitoring.

A provider of sanctions screening engines was interested in assessing how effective their screening engine was at identifying sanction list names and how the various system configuration setting options might affect screening effectiveness.

A major UK retail bank was interested in assessing how effective their customer sanctions screening system was at identifying sanction list names should they occur in their customer base.

SQA Consulting has developed a new screening tool called the Eliminator. This takes your alerts, matches and reprocesses them, applying further logic and rules to eliminate vast quantities of false positives.

SQA Consulting were engaged by a client to assist with the implementation of their new upgraded Screening Solution. In particular, they wanted advice and guidance concerning which screening threshold would work best for them.