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Buying sanctions screening software? Five tests a search box fails
If you are buying or renewing sanctions screening software this year, the demos will look alike. You type a name, it is matched against OFAC, EU, UN and UK lists, and you get a clean result. The problem is that a counterparty is not a name. It is an ownership structure, and sanctions exposure often hides one or two layers below the company on the contract.
· 2 MIN READ · BY THE KYCK DESK
1. Does it screen the structure, not just the signatory?
The entity, its directors, its shareholders and its ultimate beneficial owners should be screened in the same pass. The real exposure sits in who owns and controls the company, not in the name on the invoice.
2. Are the lists current and complete?
OFAC, the EU consolidated list, UK OFSI, the UN Security Council and the other authorities relevant to where you trade, kept current by the data provider rather than a copy from last quarter. Ask which lists are covered and how quickly designations reach the tool.
3. Does the matching survive real-world names?
Aliases, name order, partial matches and transliterations create many spellings of one person. Good matching weighs strong identifiers such as date of birth, nationality or country of registration over weak ones, so you catch the real hit without drowning in false positives. Our piece on false positives goes deeper.
4. Can it re-screen, not just screen once?
A counterparty that is clean today can be designated tomorrow. The tool should let you re-run any counterparty against current lists whenever you need to, and re-screen the book on a schedule, instead of waiting for the next manual review.
5. Does it leave an audit trail?
Who was screened, against which lists, when, with what match reasoning, and what the reviewer decided on every hit. You should be able to export that trail for an auditor or a bank without rebuilding it.
Where KYCK stands
KYCK screens the counterparty and the people found in its structure for sanctions, PEP and adverse media in one pass, with explainable match scores and a timestamped audit trail that exports in one click. Any counterparty can be re-screened on demand, and scheduled rescreening of the whole book is available as an add-on (see pricing). If a tool can only tell you whether an exact name is on a list right now, it is a search box. See how screening in KYCK works.
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