Protect your business with automated Nomentia Sanction screening

In today’s complex financial landscape, compliance with international sanctions regulations is crucial for any organization handling payments. Non-compliance can result in severe penalties, loss of business opportunities, and reputational damage. To help businesses stay compliant and mitigate these risks, Nomentia has launched a new Sanction Screening solution designed to automate the screening process, ensure compliance, and protect your organization from potential legal and financial pitfalls. 

What is Nomentia Sanction Screening? 

Nomentia's Sanction Screening solution is an automated tool that screens company payments, preventing payments from reaching sanctioned beneficiaries. This solution checks company payments against selected sanctions lists and ensures that businesses remain compliant with international regulations. 

"Our goal with the Sanctions Screening solution was to create a seamless, efficient tool that integrates directly with existing payment processes, ensuring compliance is never an afterthought." - Jukka Estola, Senior Product Manager, Nomentia 

Public sanctions lists are essential tools for identifying individuals, organizations, and governments involved in illicit activities, such as terrorism, drug trafficking, human rights violations, and more. By automating the process of screening against these lists, Nomentia's solution helps businesses avoid the legal and financial consequences associated with sanctions breaches. 

How does Nomentia's Sanction Screening solution work? 

The Nomentia Sanction Screening solution automates list-based sanctions screening against selected public. Here's how it works: 

1. Payment preparation and screening: When a user prepares their payment data in a centralized payment processing system (Nomentia Payments) or in their ERP system, this data is sent through Nomentia's Sanction Screening solution. The solution checks the payment recipients and beneficiaries against available sanction lists. 
2. Flagging and alerts: The payment is flagged as compliant if there are no discrepancies. However, if the recipient is found on any sanctions list, the payment is flagged as non-compliant, and the payment maker is alerted to log in and review the flagged transaction. The algorithm efficiently processes data to identify partial matches and suggest similarities for a review. 
3. Managing false positives and hits: If a flagged recipient is identified as a false positive (e.g., a name match that does not indicate the same person), the recipient can be added to a whitelist to avoid future alerts. True positives are added to a blocked alerts list, requiring the organization to terminate contracts with the sanctioned party and remove them from their systems. 
4. Continuous monitoring and updates: Whitelist data is regularly scanned against public lists, and any hits are processed through the sanctions screening alert view. False positives are marked in the software and added to a source system-specific whitelist.

By aligning with your company's existing "Know Your Customer" (KYC) processes, Nomentia's Sanctions Screening solution ensures that not only customers but also partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders are screened effectively, helping you avoid sanctions violations and maintain compliance. 

Who is Nomentia's Sanction Screening for? 

Compliance is a critical aspect of business resilience, and Nomentia Sanction Screening solution is particularly beneficial for organizations that need to ensure compliance with international regulations related to financial transactions, like: 

• Internationally trading companies: To avoid dealing with sanctioned entities or individuals, thereby reducing legal risks. 
• Payment processors: To ensure that online transactions are screened against sanctions lists, preventing involvement in illicit activities. 
  
• Export and import businesses: To ensure compliance with trade restrictions by screening customers, suppliers, and third parties.
• Companies with government contracts: To verify that business partners and subcontractors are not on sanctions lists. 
•  International NGOs: To comply with international laws by screening partners and recipients of funds, especially in conflict zones or sanctioned countries. 

Why should your company be interested in Nomentia Sanction Screening solution? 

"With recent high-profile sanctions violations, it's clear that automated compliance solutions like ours are more essential than ever for protecting businesses from severe financial and legal consequences." - Jukka Estola, Senior Product Manager, Nomentia 

1. Compliance and risk management: Nomentia Sanction Screening solution helps businesses avoid severe legal and financial consequences by ensuring compliance with international sanctions. Non-compliance can result in substantial fines, asset seizures, and even criminal charges for responsible individuals. 
2. Reputation protection: Avoiding sanctions violations helps maintain a company's reputation and prevents negative publicity that could lead to customer loss, boycotts, or divestment.
3. Operational efficiency: Automated and advanced screening processes reduce the need for manual checks, saving time and resources. The ability to quickly identify false positives and manage hits improves operational efficiency. 
4. Avoiding market exclusion: Businesses that violate sanctions can lose access to certain markets and be excluded from bidding on contracts, hindering growth and expansion efforts. 
5. Cost avoidance: Sanctions violations can lead to costly legal fees, fines, and remediation efforts. Nomentia's solution helps prevent these expenses by ensuring thorough and consistent compliance checks. 

Recent high-profile cases demonstrate the importance of robust sanctions compliance programs:

• Deutsche Bank (July 2023): Fined $186 million for sanctions and anti-money laundering violations.
• Swedbank (June 2023): Fined $3.4 million for apparent violations of OFAC’s Crimea sanctions.
• Microsoft (April 2023): Fined $3.3 million for violations related to sanctions on Crimea, Cuba, Iran, and Syria.
• Danske Bank: (December 2022): Fined $2 billion for violations related to sanctions involving high-risk customers from Russia, in the context of a broader money laundering case.

Companies can significantly reduce the risk of sanctions violations by implementing Nomentia Sanction Screening as part of the customer onboarding due diligence process. This ensures compliance with international regulations by automatically screening customer data against current sanctions lists, identifying high-risk entities, and preventing transactions with prohibited individuals or organizations. 

Nomentia Sanction Screening expands Nomentia’s payments security and compliance portfolio 

Nomentia Sanction Screening expands Nomentia’s payment security solutions by adding a globally automated compliance layer to the existing payment validation and fraud prevention capabilities. While Nomentia Payments ensures the accuracy and validity of payment data, such as IBANs, BICs, reference numbers, and currency checks, and Nomentia Payment Process Controls provide tailored protection through conditional rules, the Nomentia Sanction Screening solution further safeguards transactions by automatically screening against public sanctions lists. This comprehensive approach ensures payments are secure, compliant, and free from risks associated with sanctioned entities. 

"Nomentia's Sanctions Screening adds a vital layer of security to payment processes, ensuring that every transaction is thoroughly checked against sanctions lists." Jukka Estola, Senior Product Manager, Nomentia 

By implementing Nomentia Sanction Screening solution, your business can improve compliance, protect its reputation, and maintain market access. 

Learn more about Nomentia Sanction Screening 

To learn more about how Nomentia’s Sanction Screening solution can help your organization stay compliant and secure, contact us today to request a demo or speak with our team or sign up to the waitlist here and get priority access to the solution.