The Benefits of Watchlist Screening

What is Watchlist Screening?

Watchlist Screening is the process of checking entities, such as individual people or organizations, against electronically available documentation and identifying if the entity is high-risk.

Note: Watchlists are provided and managed at a global level by governments, law enforcement agencies, transnational agencies, and other regulatory bodies.

Watchlist Screening is a crucial practice when onboarding customers and partners to adhere to Know Your Customer (KYC) standards. Organizations can learn about their customers’ exposure to Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), Negative News, and Sanctions lists.

By acknowledging their customers' and partners' watchlist status, businesses can detect and prevent financial crimes such as money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, or other illegal activities. This practice allows companies to protect their financial integrity and develop a trusted customer base.

Why is Watchlist Screening Beneficial for Businesses?

1. 1. 1. Organizations and enterprises can comply with Anti-Money Laundering regulations with the use of watchlist screening, avoiding liability.

1. 1. 1. Relationships with individuals with government positions (PEP) can represent increased risks due to the possible misuse of power, leading to illegal money activities. Particularly high-risk PEPs include heads of state and government, MPs, heads of military and high-ranking officials of public parties. These individuals can acquire funds through illegitimate means such as bribery and corruption, increasing risks of money laundering.
      2. Watchlist screening is the first measure businesses can utilize to combat identity theft fraud, money laundering, criminal groups, and other illegal activities, helping organizations to build a trusted company image.

1. 1. 1. Melissa’s automated watchlist screening uses artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to quickly retrieve matches from large volumes of data with watchlists. The service allows for fast and efficient processing with easy integration, requiring little to no setup time.
      2. Data is checked in real-time using trusted and up-to-date reference and international databases.

Why Melissa?

Melissa offers an all-in-one service that includes Identity Verification, Proof of Address, Contact Data Cleansing/Validation, and Watchlist Screening to help our clients streamline the process while saving costs. Request a demonstration today!

Data Quality

At Melissa, we believe that high-quality data is accurate, complete, consistent, and clean. Data needs to include all requisite information to serve the expected purpose. Data should also follow specific formats that are useful for presentation, aggregate reporting, search, and establishing key relationships. Having clean and rich data helps provide businesses with sufficient information to identify and verify their customers.

Our real-time sanctions and AML checks can aid in identifying and preventing risk. Melissa works with governments and organizations across the world to provide customized and reliable identity verification and screening capabilities.

Melissa’s 30+ years of experience in address management, global identity verification, and multi-sourced global reference datasets has powered better business decisions through better quality data.

Related Resources:

1. 1. Preventing Fraud & Driving Donations (eBook)
   2. Strategies to Minimize False Positives & Risk
   3. Personator World: Don't Just Know Your Customer, Trust Your Customer (Video)
   4. Enrich Your Data, Improve Confidence & Prevent Fraud (Video)