Sanctions screening

Sanctions screening explained

Governments and international bodies publish lists of people and organisations that institutions must not deal with, or must treat with restrictions. The best known are the United Nations Security Council lists, the US OFAC list, and the EU and UK lists. Screening is the process of comparing your customers and the parties in your transactions against those lists.

The hard part is matching. Names are transliterated differently across scripts, people use aliases, and lists change daily. A good screening system uses fuzzy matching and alias expansion, then gives a reviewer the evidence to decide whether a hit is the listed person or just someone with a similar name.

For example, a payment to a company whose registered name differs by one word from a sanctioned entity should be held for review rather than either blocked outright or waved through.

Why it matters in life insurance

Institutions in Zambia are expected to screen at onboarding and on an ongoing basis, and to keep evidence of each result for the regulator. Screening one customer at a time on a public website does not scale and leaves no audit trail. ERMAML, the Ontech Risk & Compliance Suite, maintains a local watchlist synced from UN, OpenSanctions and FIC sources, screens with fuzzy matching, and records every result with a maker-checker review of possible matches.

Related terms

PEP (politically exposed person) · False positive (screening) · CFT (combating the financing of terrorism) · KYC (know your customer)