Sanction list monitoring for prevention of terrorism financing
Due to national and international legislation (EU Regulations 2580/2001 and 881/2002), which was introduced for foreign payment transactions, companies must check the sender and receiver data of their business and financial transactions against sanction lists. This aims to prevent companies from providing terrorists, terrorist organisations or other criminals with money, financial assets or economic resources. The legislation affects all individuals involved in business, export- and import-oriented companies, banks and insurance companies. Business dealings with embargoed individuals or organisations are punishable and, as well as fine proceedings and criminal prosecution, can also mean massive damage to the company’s reputation.
Monitoring payment transactions with SironEmbargo
By checking the sender/receiver data of a transaction against embargo/sanction lists, companies can identify embargoed individuals, groups and organisations before the payment process is completed and freeze money or financial resources. Embargo/sanction lists (e.g. the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Common Foreign Security Policy (CFSP), HM Treasury) are official lists that are made available free of charge by national and international organisations. In addition, companies which do business with the USA or which have subsidiaries there are obliged to use the US-specific lists (OFAC) for their sanction-list check.
SironEmbargo is a software for identifying people and organisations who are subject to sanctions. With the real-time monitoring of payment transactions, SironEmbargo detects and stops all transactions whose sender/receiver data matches entries in the sanction lists (e.g. names or aliases of terrorists, terrorist organisations and criminals). Transactions which have become suspicious because of a match are stopped by SironEmbargo and passed to the compliance officer with all the details for immediate analysis in the integrated Case Management. Unsuspicious transactions are released immediately and returned to the payment-transaction process.
SironEmbargo handles SWIFT, non-SWIFT and SEPA payment-transaction formats
The sanction-list monitoring software SironEmbargo handles a variety of payment-transaction formats, including SWIFT MX, SWIFT MT, ISO 20022 (SEPA), Merva and WBI-FN, via standardised interfaces.
SironEmbargo has been awarded the SWIFT Ready Application label, which certifies that the solution complies with all SWIFT standards and guarantees connectivity with SWIFT payments.
SironEmbargo at a glance
- Satisfies all legal requirements (EU Regulations 2580/2001 and 881/2002) for combating international terrorism
- Real-time checking of all sender/receiver data of transactions against national and international sanction lists or the bank’s own watch lists: Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Common Foreign Security Policy (CFSP), Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT), …
- Comprehensive search mechanisms: Exact and fuzzy searches for identifying inverted parts of names, abbreviations, substitutions, different notations or deletions
- Comprehensive case management for analysis and assessment of stopped transactions. Suspicious sender/receiver data of a transaction is displayed with the corresponding sanction-list entries, so cases can be processed quickly and efficiently
- Whitelists and individual business rules reduce the rate of false positives to a minimum and produce a noticeable reduction of the internal checking overhead
- Standardised interfaces to PEP databases: World-Check, Dow Jones Factiva, World Compliance, …
- Support for SWIFT, non-SWIFT and SEPA payment-transaction formats: SWIFT MX, SWIFT MT, ISO 20022 (SEPA), Merva, WBI-FN
- Certified quality: SWIFT Ready Application Label