Mitigating Risks By Managing Customer On-boarding Effectively with Sanction Screening Solutions

Sanctions Screening Solutionis pivotal for financial institutions (FIs) to prevent financial risks or threats that institutions face, across the world, today. While the digital intervention has redefined individual payments and business transactions, there has been a palpable rise in financial crime that has led to Fraud and Money Laundering as well as challenge in identifying an individual or entity initiating a transaction that has been sanctioned or not. As a result, FIs fail to maintain effective screening processes, due to which they are subjected to penalties from regulators. To minimise these risks and penalties, financial institutions are implementing the screening solutions as part of the compliance, at the primary stage of customer relationship during the on-boarding that will allow them to identify risks, while meeting the regulatory and legal obligations.

Sanction Screening Solutionsplay a pivotal role to mitigate these challenges by ensuring that a person or entity is screened as per the Sanction List issued by various global institutions (e.g., FATF, UN), Governments, Regulators etc. Sanction checks must be carried out by both parties – the originator and the beneficiary of the transaction so that neither party is on a Sanction List, due to any criminal, political or other reasons. This is imperative to identify risk posed by an on-boarding customer, payment sender, payment beneficiary, intermediary financial institution or potential customer by scanning them against Sanction Lists.

ABG’s Sanctions Screening Solutions provide end-to-end screening solutions for FIs to effectively manage their transactions and processes. ABG’s solutions assure credibility to the FIs and include real-time name screening of the customer during the on-boarding process to help the FIs assess sanctions risk posed by the potential customer and also ensure the process is as seamless as possible. In case a potential match is found against a customer’s name in the Sanctions List, ABG’s Sanctions Screening Solution alerts the FI’s Compliance and Relationship Managers and gives the FI flexibility to put the on-boarding process of that customer on hold, automatically, until detailed verification by the compliance team is done.

The solution also provides real-time payment screening for all types of transactions including SWIFT, instant payments, etc. The Solution leverages real-time analytics to allow FIs to extract transaction originators and beneficiaries from payment messages using Natural Language Processing. Transaction originator and beneficiaries are then screened against Sanctions List using advanced fuzzy logic match to ensure accurate results. ABG’s Solution supports screening against both External Sanctions Lists (e.g., FATF, Regulators etc.) and Internal Sanctions Lists (maintained by Financial Institutions themselves).

Financial institutions must take the responsibility to support the restrictions imposed by Governments through a systematic approach to provide high standards in quality control and governance that can effectively reduce any kind of financial threats. With ABG’s Sanctions Screenings Solutions FIs can assure seamless and effective way to combat any potential financial crimes by eliminating the risks with the support of real-time screening process.