How can we efficiently manage sanctions and PEP screening?

The ultimate goal of any sanctions and PEP screening program is to reduce risk and comply with government mandates aimed at fighting money laundering and terrorist financing. Doing so often requires significant costs in personnel resources. How can organizations meet their compliance goals while minimizing the cost to do so?

An efficient compliance screening program reduces the risk associated with missing real matches (false negatives) and minimizes the time and cost associated with researching false matches (false positives). This should be accomplished through a foundation of data quality. First, the name and address information of both customer/associate records and the sanctions and PEP lists against which they are being matched must be cleansed and standardized for consistent format comparisons. Next, all aliases, nicknames, and multiple names should be detected and included in the screening process. Records should then be accurately matched in spite of anomalies such as misspellings, transpositions, missing information, nicknames, acronyms and initials. Personnel time spent reviewing potential matches can be minimized by a employing a sophisticated case management tool. These steps allow the proper balance between reducing risk and controlling cost.

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