TABLE OF CONTENTS


Summary

This article explains available screening profiles, fuzziness levels, adverse media and some FAQS.


What is a screening profile? 

A screening profile is an option for customising which international lists are searched when you are run a screening checks on your customer. As compliance admin you can select from one of the four profiles customise the fuzziness level and decide whether to turn adverse media on or off.


Screening profiles

Within the customisation of the screening profiles there are four options you can select from as explained above. This can be customised at a company level or at an office level. 


Customising at an office level could be useful if you have your offices set up in the platform as a workstream and would like more comprehensive checks completed on higher risk workstreams. 


The default profile will be Standard and the default fuzziness level is set to 30% for each profile. 


How to configure

Custom profiles can only be set up by Compliance Admin users within your company. The option will be available within the settings if you are a Compliance Admin user for your Source platform.


1. Navigate to settings on the left-hand navigation and click on the Screening profile tab. 


2. You can then leave at the customer office level or select specific office to customise the screening profile, fuzziness and if adverse media is toggled on for your screening checks. 


3. Select the desired screening profile, fuzziness level for your screening checks. 


Setting up as a customer/company level 


Setting up at an office level

 


The profile used for the screening is shown in the individual profile. 



Fuzziness Levels

Fuzziness (Edit/Levenshtein Distance) is a matching technique that allows for a variation in spelling or small variations in the spelling of a search term and the entities returned in the search results. 


The fuzziness will allow 1 phonetic typo per each word from the search term, the fuzziness percentage has more to do with the length of the word. Setting the interval is entirely dependent on your risk-based approach and how sure you are that the names you input for searching are correct (e.g. if you take info directly from a customers' IDs and input it yourself - which would be more prone to error). 


Fuzziness can be useful as it allows for variations of the spelling, as well as spelling mistakes to be made during submission. 


More regarding fuzziness.


Adverse media 

Adverse Media is information about a specific organization or individual, that would signal potential negative regulatory, financial, or reputation risk to companies looking to or currently doing business with them.

This information needs to be based on fact, and not opinion, which means that sources need to be classed as reputable in our validation process. Adverse Media comes as unstructured text in sources such as websites or blogs from public or private institutions, commercial organizations, news outlets, or private individuals.

Relevant articles are presented to the user in a consolidated profile. Each reference to an article contains:

  • Weblink to access the actual article or webpage
  • Article title and publishing date if they are available
  • A snippet of the relevant part of the article to provide insight into the adverse nature of the associated media

More around adverse media


Adverse media can only be toggled on or off at a company level, not at an office level.




Which categories are covered by adverse media?

Adverse media profiles are assigned at least one category depending on the type of media they have been associated with. These categories enable users to distribute risk across different teams and to better understand the context of a profile. 


Adverse Media categories can include:

  • Financial AML/CFT
  • Narcotics AML/CFT
  • Violence AML/CFT
  • Terrorism
  • Fraud-linked
  • Property
  • Cybercrime
  • General AML/CFT


The screening profile selected will determine which categories are covered when running adverse media checks.

If you would like to check each category description along with FATF and EU ML Directive confirmation, please reach out to First AML Support to receive the entire document.


Ongoing monitoring

Please note if you change the profile or fuzziness level this will only affect new screening checks, the historical ongoing monitoring will be using the exact profile and fuzziness that was in place when these checks were completed. 

 

FAQS

Can you recommend a screening profile? 

We would suggest that you refer to your compliance program to determine which profile would be suitable.


Can you recommend the best fuzziness level?

Our recommendation of 30% is the default fuzziness, alternatively refer to your compliance program to see if this is suitable. 


Why should I change screening profile/fuzziness?

Customising the fuzziness is entirely up to how wide you would like to cast the net when screening both individuals and companies. As per the fuzziness definition different fuzziness levels can allow for spelling mistakes or full legal names compared to just first and surnames. 


Should we be using adverse media?

We cannot recommend whether you should have adverse media switched on or off. We have seen customers who are required to run adverse media checks based on their risk assessment questionnaire and compliance documentation. The main use case for running Adverse Media checks is to potentially learn about adverse media items which your customer may not have disclosed to you.


I am a compliance admin and the profiles changed, can you show me which user changed this?

If you notice an unexpected change to the screening profiles, First AML can confirm with you which other admin made the change and when they were made. To enquire about this submit a ticket via the Help Centre. 


What lists are covered with the different screening profiles

For more information about the different lists that are part of each profile please contact [email protected]