Sanctions Screening: Differing Priorities and Future Challenges

FISC and WorldECR are delighted to present the first in a two-part webinar series examining differing perspectives on sanctions screening priorities, and looking at the future challenges.

The process of screening names, transactions and documents to establish if there may be a sanctions nexus to either customers or transactions dates back less than two decades. However, in that time sanctions screening has become one of the mainstays in any sanctions control framework. What grew out from a need to identify terrorists in the wake of the Al-Qaeda attacks on 9/11 has developed substantially. Regulators like OFAC and OFSI now expect all companies to carry out sanctions screening adequate to the potential risks posed to them, although in most jurisdictions screening is still not a legal requirement.

Despite being a relatively new practice, sanctions screening has seen significant changes, developments and challenges take place. From the very start sanctions screening has been complicated due to a range of factors: from the information that is available to screen against to the languages involved, and even the script and spelling of names and words. The process is further complicated by issues such as ownership and control, including the 50% rule, and the increasing use of sectoral sanctions. As a result, sanctions screening has had to develop at pace, and innovations in technology are now increasingly providing more reliable and robust solutions.

In this one-hour webinar Jeremy Round of SQA Consulting, a computer scientist who has helped to develop screening software for financial institutions, leads a discussion with Jocelyn Norval, Global Screening Lead at ING, and Jo Phizacklea, a screening specialist at FinTech company Klarna AB, which:

· examines the challenges that sanctions screening has tackled and how;

· discusses how tier 1 Banks and FinTechs tackle the challenges, including the similarities and differences; and

· looks to the future and how sanctions screening is likely to continue to develop, and what technologies may improve the effectiveness of screening.

Join us and find out how sanctions screening has developed, how it can be effective in mitigating sanctions risks, and what the future may hold.