TABLE OF CONTENTS


Why are there hits where the date of birth and countries do not match my search terms?

You may sometimes find that a matched entity in your case has a Year of Birth (YOB) that is over one year away from the YOB you input into the platform. Or that the Country field in the matched entity is not the country the entity is registered to in the Entity Address field.


There are key behaviours of our default algorithm setup that explain this. Firstly, it's important to remember that our algorithm builds and continuously enriches profiles through linking and integrating data from multiple sources. Data fields in one single entity, such as DOB, Countries, AKAs (also-known-as, or alias names) and Associates (individuals linked to the entity, such as family members or business partners). They can be drawn from different lists or sources and combined into one profile.


In order to reduce the possibility of false negatives (a genuine match that's incorrectly filtered out and never shown to you), our search algorithm will only filter out results based on data points that are extracted from sources that you are screening against.


For example:

  1. The individual has a YOB of 1962. The customer is configured to search for Sanctions and PEP listings only.
  2. When we hit search, the following hit is returned, where the individual is matched against another individual with a similar name, but a YOB of 1984 (outside the +/- 1 year range).
  3. When clicking into the hit, the matched individual's YOB (1984) has been pulled from an Adverse Media listing. This is because, in this instance, the PEPs and Sanctions source is missing the YOB. Our screening tool auto-populates the YOB from an alternative source, e.g. Adverse Media.
  4. However, as we only screened against Sanctions and PEPs by default, our system will not rule out this match. If the YOB was being populated from a Sanctions or PEP listing, then the YOB filter would exclude this entity match. The same applies to the Country filter.




The diagram below further explains this process:


Getting a high number of false positives? 

You can adjust your fuzziness setting to control how closely a name needs to match before it's flagged. see Screening: fuzzy matching for how to configure this.



What is your time frame for defining a PEP? 

As our platform needs to comply with many screening requirements across the world, as a general rule of thumb, we take the path of the most restrictive legislation. Since some jurisdictions' regulators require former Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs: individuals who hold, or have held, a prominent public function, along with their close associates and family members) to be screened, we will always flag a former office holder as a PEP, irrespective of how long that person has been out of office.


This behaviour is true for all the new sources of data that we currently add and maintain in our database.


However, even with this most restrictive approach, we currently label all former office holders' profiles with a "Date Removed" label within the screening report, which serves as a proxy date for when the entity exited office.



Do you cover criminal activity?

We do not explicitly cover criminal activity, as we do not currently conduct criminal record checks for our clients.


However, if the individual or business entity you're investigating is on any of the sources we cover, their profile will be made available. Depending on the nature of their crime, it's possible for them to appear on a sanctions or warnings list, for example, but we do not hold criminal records on file.


See more on our Advanced Screening Tool.



Are you able to identify organisations or companies as State Owned Entities?

At the moment, our coverage includes individuals only (such as board members and top executives) in our database who would be identified as PEPs linked to a State Owned Entity (SOE: a company where a government holds full or partial ownership). Our approach to PEPs working for SOEs is as follows:

  • First-level national SOEs with an ownership of at least 25% (this is in line with most national legislation, and is often more inclusive than national requirements. However, if the national requirements are wider, e.g. up to 10%, then we cover these SOEs as well).
  • First-level subsidiaries of SOEs operating in high-risk industries with ownership of at least 25% (high-risk sectors include but are not limited to Energy, Oil and Gas Industry, Mineral and Coal Industry, Financial Services, Infrastructure, Transport Services, and Telecommunication).