Sanctions White Paper
Synopsis
Financial institutions, and other companies, are obliged to make sure that they do not conduct business with Sanctioned Clients, those listed by OFAC1 and HMT2. Such is the concern about verifying that a company's customers are not listed by the regulators that sophisticated and expensive non-exact searching systems are being deployed.
These searching systems provide complex algorithms for finding listed people, but do they address real issues with corporate data, and do they provide for academic situations not found in the real world?
This study examines real corporate data to determine what problems are abounding in personal name data, and how frequently they occur.
Only once we have determined these difficulties can we judge if searching systems are fit for purpose.
Introduction
Many companies spend many millions on sophisticated screening systems to find and nullify the terrorist threat in their customer book. But how far should they go? If the customer base has been captured accurately then exact name matching should surely find everything they are looking for. If we have a customer called “Usapa Bin-Laden” then surely this isn't the person we are looking for.
However data capture is never perfect, and no record of customer names is 100% accurate; what is hard to establish is how inaccurate, and in what manner we get customer names wrong.
This study covers a large database of customers, from a leading financial institution, over a period of 8 years, and analyses all corrections made to personal names. By examining the extent of these corrections we can categorise and tally these changes.
Once we understand how we get customer names wrong, then we can judge if our screening systems are capable of addressing and compensating for those errors.
The white paper will show the results of an in-depth analysis of Personal Name corrections, and their implications on Sanctions Screening.
If you would like a copy if this white paper please email jason.storey@sqa-consulting.com
For more information on Sanctions, please fill out our contact form or email info@sqa-consulting.com entering Sanctions in the subject field.