Sanctions and Risk Screening FREE within the Smart Search report
FOCUS ON: SANCTIONS, PEP, SIP & RCA SCREENING
Sanctions are restrictions used to stop individuals and entities who are involved in – or suspected of – illegal activities from engaging in certain industries. Government bodies and financial authorities both issue sanctions lists; these can be used to screen individuals and organisations for financial sanctions.
Sanctions searches and PEP screenings are a central component of your AML checks, as they confirm that your client doesn’t present a money laundering risk.
The SmartSearch system completes Sanction and PEP screening on every AML check you perform, automatically triggering Enhanced Due Diligence on any matches. It then screens all customers every night and alerts you of any changes.
The SmartSearch Sanctions check is delivered using the Dow Jones “Watch List” compiled from over 1,100 different worldwide Sanctions Lists. This database also includes PEPs, SIPs (Special Interest Persons) and RCAs (Relatives and Close Associates); SIPs are people who are convicted, arrested or undergoing trial for financial or serious crime such as fraud or drug trafficking. RCAs are people related to or close friends of people on the Sanctions, PEP and SIP lists; It is not an offence to deal with either a SIP or RCA, but client’s who are wary of reputational risk or who have a very stringent internal risk policy may want this information.
As Sanctions and PEP lists do not contain address information, the check can only be made against the name and therefore most alerts generated are “false positives” By removing fuzzy matching and checking names on an exact match basis SmartSearch manage to reduce the number of false positives to typically between 3% to 5%. However, whenever an alert is generated Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) must be carried out to confirm if the person you are transacting with is indeed the person on the Sanctions or PEP list. Therefore to reduce the amount of additional work required we have developed a unique automated system for performing Automated Enhanced Due Diligence, (AEDD).
In addition to the initial Sanctions and PEP check, all client records are subject to daily monitoring against updates to the Sanctions and PEP lists. Whenever a new matched record is added to one of the lists, an alert is automatically added to your login screen so that further EDD can be performed, giving you complete confidence that your business is compliant.
The final AML certificate clearly shows whether or not the individual or business has been matched to a Sanctions or PEP list; in cases where there has been a false positive it confirms that EDD has been conducted. This AML certificate can be downloaded as a PDF and can also be retrieved at a later date by logging into the SmartSearch platform.