Sanctions and PEP Screening for Challenger Banks and Fintechs

The landscape for banking services has changed beyond recognition in the last few years. The award of the first retail banking license for 100 years to Metro Bank in 2010, opened the flood gates, and since then ever more challenger banks and fintechs are disrupting the market. Many challenger banks are targeting specific customer segments […]
Commonality of Personal Names in Sanctions Screening

Screening for sanctions names is tricky. As well as people trying to hide their identity by using an alias, names can be presented for screening in all sorts of different ways. Matching a name on a sanctions list requires a screening system with complex algorithms that will identify the match without also creating a significant […]
The Sanctions Screening of Long Names

When performing payments screening assurance, we often find issues with the screening of very short and very long names. We expect when testing screening systems that a name from a sanctions list – when placed as an originator or beneficiary in a payments message – will create an alert. However, in practice when we do […]
Adverse Media – Source Data

Following on from our previous article on adverse media, let’s assume for now that you wish to include adverse media checks as part of your AML controls. A sensible starting point is to define what you will use as the source of the adverse media information to be reviewed as part of your processes. A […]
An Introduction to Adverse Media – To screen or not to screen?

Adverse Media, Negative News, Special Interest Persons and Reputationally Exposed Persons are all interrelated terminology concerned with finding the bad news stories about your customers or potential customers and understanding the reputational risk associated with them. While legislation and guidance is somewhat vague in terms of what exactly is required in relation to Adverse Media, […]
Sanctions Screening Testing – Exact Name Test Data

In previous articles, we look at our testing of sanctions screening systems, where we provide assurance over the effectiveness of a screening system and provide benchmark analysis of a system’s screening effectiveness compared against industry benchmark statistics. In this series of articles, we will delve deeper into the test types that constitute our sanctions effectiveness […]