AML Watcher, the leading AML risk screening solution, has launched Sanctions 2.0 to empower financial institutions and businesses to screen their global customers while preventing unnecessary de-risking effectively.
Sanctions 2.0 introduces a context-driven approach to precise labelling of the scope of sanctions in terms of Travel Bans, Arms Embargos, Asset Freeze, and associated Secondary Sanctions Risk. This tailored context screening ensures effective reduction in false positives and false negatives, saving time and resources.
The exclusive, updated version enables compliance teams to efficiently assess whether a flagged match constitutes a genuine, true positive, aligning with the organization’s defined risk appetite and exposure thresholds, or not.
Sanctions 2.0 addresses the challenges that financial institutions and businesses face in balancing compliance with sanctions regimes and ensuring speed. As countries introduce regulations to facilitate instant payments, service providers are facing pressure to balance speed with sanctions compliance.
This challenge is more evident from the EU’s Regulation (EU) 2024/886, which requires daily customer risk assessments against EU restrictive measures for SEPA Instant Payments, ensuring transactions are processed within 10 seconds.
Sanctions 2.0 also addresses the challenge of compliance with conflicting sanctions regimes, such as OFAC’s Secondary Sanctions and the EU Blocking Statute. As traditional risk assessment tools lack the complete context, compliance officers struggle to ascertain a sanctioned entity’s relevance to the laws of jurisdiction.
“It was not just about building a sanctions screening tool to assist with compliance, but it was also about using the power of data-tech to reduce false positives and prevent loss of revenue due to unnecessary de-risking. At AML Watcher, we were able to achieve it because of our proprietary data sourced by a team of expert researchers, which allows us to continuously improve the screening abilities in line with global regulatory requirements and arising compliance challenges.” Meera Vidyut, Head Of Sales – APAC, AML Watcher.
AML Watcher, to enhance screening for improved data, has developed the Sanctions 2.0 solution to address the challenge of excessive de-risking faced by financial institutions. Unnecessary de-risking, which often results in the loss of valuable customers and, consequently, revenue, can be avoided if sanctions screening outcomes are presented in context through labeling. Screening with such innovative tools provides sanctions compliance officers with insight into the nature of the associated sanctions regime and, consequently, the scope of implementation.
Structured labeling in Sanctions 2.0 provides additional classification parameters, allowing compliance teams to assess flagged entities with greater precision. Furthermore, a combination of adverse media screening ensures that no newly added or removed sanction names are missed, and sanctions data are updated every 15 minutes.
AML Watcher, a RegTech solution to streamline the AML Compliance for the obligated sector, has been built on the vision of providing accurate AML Screening data in line with diverse and often conflicting Anti-Money Laundering Regulations. To assist businesses in leveraging AML compliance as a global expansion strategy, the AML Watcher’s data technology boasts comprehensive global coverage of 235+ sanctions regimes, 415+ risk categories for adverse media, 2.6 million PEP profiles, and more than 3,500 watchlists, warnings, and regulatory enforcement actions.