Blog >
PEPs, Sanction Checks & Adverse Media Screening with FullCircl
Customer Lifecycle Intelligence
Customer Due Diligence
KYC / KYB
Risk Management

PEPs, Sanction Checks & Adverse Media Screening with FullCircl

Businesses use FullCircl to expedite compliant onboarding of new customers for KYC/AML, while ensuring confidence in the regulatory assessment of a counterparty. This extends to conducting checks for PEPs, sanctions & adverse media -- all made simple with the FullCircl web app or API. 

Businesses use FullCircl to expedite compliant onboarding of new customers for KYC/AML, while ensuring confidence in the regulatory assessment of a counterparty. This extends to conducting checks for PEPs, sanctions & adverse media -- all made simple with the FullCircl web app or API. 

Conducting these checks with FullCircl’s Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) platform allows businesses to identify all linkages of corporate ownership and associated individuals. As a result, when a check is run against a specific entity, that check can be extended to all these related parties, returning any flags or sanctions across the entire group. Advanced datasets reveal the ultimate beneficial owner of a business, enable PEP checks, and uncover any sanctions levied against a business. 

Are you keeping up with the know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulatory demands of your business? 

Companies today must adhere to strict regulatory protocol to protect them from financial, legal, and reputational damage. Many leverage third party compliance checks to uncover PEPs (Politically Exposed Persons), sanctions, and adverse media associated with a company to ensure their business is better protected against risk. Sufficient KYC (Know Your Customer) due diligence is an essential part of the process. 

What is a PEP Check? 

PEPs checks investigate if a Politically Exposed Person is connected to a company. These individuals are considered high risk in the compliance landscape and often show connections to associated companies, business partners, and their relatives globally. The definition of a PEP encompasses anyone that serves a prominent public function or has relatives who are politically involved, to individuals who have been convicted of money laundering or terrorist activity. 

What are Sanction Checks? 

Sanctions checks are specialised searches that include multiple international sanction databases that identify companies and individuals who are banned from certain activities or industries. Sanction lists can involve those related to terrorism, trafficking, AML, and a variety of other factors that may be important to understand before doing business with an organisation.  This is currently a business-critical compliance requirement. 

Complex, volatile and rapidly evolving, the current global sanctions landscape, with its vast range of country-specific regulations, is a huge compliance challenge for financial service institutions (FSIs).  Indeed, the UK sanctions list now covers more than 750 of Russian’s most significant and high-value individuals, entities, and subsidiaries, effectively shutting out huge sectors of the Russian Economy. 

But while the recent spate of sanctions has drawn significant media attention, in addition to Russia and Belarus, the UK Government currently imposes a range of financial sanctions on some 22 other countries including Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Korea, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Syria, and Yemen. 

What are Adverse Media Checks? 

Adverse Media checks enable businesses to quickly search a vast array of media sources for historical publishing’s which may pose reputational risk to your organisation. This can include County Court Judgements (CCJs), Gazette notices or other material captured in the media related to any entity. 

Why are adverse media checks important? 

Adverse media checks are essential for uncovering a client’s involvement with money laundering, fraud, organised crime, and terrorism. Conducting negative news screening ensures that firms do not become unwittingly involved in criminal financial activity. If involved in any of these activities, firms will face legal consequences and a stain on their reputation. 

What does adverse media screening involve? 

  • Identifying which clients should be screened, and deciding how often adverse media checks should be carried out on them. 
  • Utilising a comprehensive company information tool, such as FullCircl’s Business Information Graph (B.I.G™) to screen clients. 
  • Reviewing and evaluating the data and identifying matches. 
  • Deciding whether to continue working with a client and updating KYC systems. 

How FullCircl help can help? 

In a number of ways actually… 

  • Access a consolidated view of every UK and Irish company, director and shareholder with insight you can’t find anywhere else. Plus, visually explore company hierarchies; drill into group structures to understand parents, subsidiaries and discover international linkages 
  •  FullCircl’s monitoring capability means your team is always in the know. Updated as many as three times per day, our Business Information Graph (B.I.G.) feeds your team updates on the company events that matter most, ensuring your team is always on the front foot.  
  • Powered by intelligence from verified and validated sources, FullCircl helps to unlock the context you won’t find anywhere else – and then maps it for you. Shareholders, group structure, ultimate beneficial owners and more, all in one place and easy to analyse. 
  • Identify key events like CCJs or Gazette notices immediately by checking potential customers against global PEP and sanctions lists. Access detailed financial and historical company documents to ensure nothing is missed at any stage of the onboarding. 
  •  Access HMRC Import and Export Data to understand which of their customers are trading internationally – critical for KYC, AML, and continuous due diligence monitoring, as well as identifying opportunities to support customers and cross-sell products and services. 

 Ready to learn more? 

You May Also Like