Socure unveils new global watchlist screening and monitoring tool

AI-based biometrics and identity verification firm Socure has launched a new automated global watchlist screening and monitoring tool to help businesses verify that customers are not included on any sanctions enforcement lists, and ensure regulatory compliance in the process. A press release says the product uses AI and machine learning to enable financial institutions to screen, monitor and assess new and existing customers against the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction lists and politically exposed persons (PEP) databases, as well as custom watchlists at a premium tier.

Legacy watchlist monitoring tools, says Socure, can come with high rates of false positives, leading to noncompliance risks in the case of inaccurate results, plus the high staffing costs of maintaining such systems. The continuous, automated customer status monitoring Socure provides ensures uninterrupted compliance with KYC/CIP regulations. Socure’s product promises a 20 percent lift in sanctions screening accuracy compared to legacy tools, a 30 percent reduction in false positives, and a 75 percent reduction in manual review time from the industry average of 10 minutes down to two and a half.

A key to achieving this is what Socure calls the industry’s first two-stage scoring system. After identifying potential name matches against customer risk tolerances and producing a name match score, the system groups potential matches into entity profiles supplemented with additional personal identifiable information (PII), which could include biometrics. This creates a candidate pool to demonstrate sanctions compliance. From there, each potential match has its discrete PII elements scored for relevance to generate an overall entity correlation score, helping to confirm that the customer and the source list match are the same person. A high name match score and low entity correlation score would be indicative of a false positive.

Socure says this algorithmic approach to minimizing false positives can result in an up to 60 percent savings in resource and staffing costs. “Sanctions and KYC risk processes have traditionally been imprecise, subjective, manual processes,” says Debra Geister, VP of compliance solutions at Socure. “In today’s dynamic environment, organizations need dependable automation tools to drive both consistency and efficiency. Socure is introducing the first product in the sanctions and watchlist space that aligns with regulatory expectation, while creating automation to improve efficiency and reduce noise in the process.”

More information on Socure’s Global Watchlist Screening with Monitoring is available on Socure’s website.

Article Topics

AML  |  biometrics  |  fraud prevention  |  identity verification  |  KYC  |  Socure