Sanctions Compliance

Sanctions screening with far fewer false positives.

Match every customer and payment against global sanctions lists in real time, and let entity resolution clear the noise so analysts act on true exposure.

Problem statement

Sanctions screening is non-negotiable, but name-only matching against global lists produces a flood of false positives that hides the real hits.

Operational challenge

Spelling variants, homonyms and stale records mean one true risk can surface as dozens of matches, each of which a reviewer has to clear by hand.

How BriteBase helps

How does BriteBase help with sanctions screening?

Our engine screens against OFAC, Canada, EU, UK, Australia and APAC sanctions lists, plus trade restriction lists, then agentic workflows resolve entities to collapse near-duplicate matches into one scored identity with a plain-language reason.

BriteBase sanctions and trade evasion screening: a vessel and its linked parties screened in real time, with route analysis, risk signals and an analyst review workflow.
  1. A party is screened against global sanctions lists in real time.

  2. Raw matches are gathered across lists and variants.

  3. Entity resolution scores identity coherence.

  4. Near-duplicate false positives are cleared.

  5. True hits are escalated with a rationale and citations.

Sanctions screening explained

What is sanctions screening, and what should the software do?

Sanctions screening checks customers, beneficial owners and payment parties against government sanctions lists before a relationship opens or funds move. A missed hit is a prohibition breach, so the bar is accuracy and a decision record that holds up later.

A prohibition check, not a risk score

OFAC in the US and OFSI in the UK can impose civil penalties on a strict liability basis, so a firm can breach sanctions without intending to. Screening has to happen before onboarding completes and before a payment is released, not after the fact.

Ownership, not only names

OFAC's 50 Percent Rule treats an entity owned 50% or more in aggregate by blocked persons as blocked, even when the entity is not listed. The EU and UK apply ownership and control tests of their own. Sanctions screening software has to map ownership through the tiers, which is why our engine resolves the structure behind a company name.

Coverage that matches your exposure

The lists that matter depend on where you operate and whose currency you move: OFAC, Canada under the Special Economic Measures Act, the EU, the UK, Australia and APAC regimes, plus trade restriction lists such as the US BIS lists and the Canada Export Controls List when goods are involved.

Customer, entity and payment screening through one API

The same matching logic should apply when a person onboards, when a business is reviewed with its owners, and when a payment names an originator or beneficiary. Our sanctions screening API returns a scored result with the reason behind it, so your workflow can clear, hold or escalate without a second system.

Key capabilities

What powers the workflow?

  • Global list coverage

    OFAC, Canada, EU, UK, Australia and APAC.

  • Agentic entity resolution

    Collapses duplicate matches.

  • Explainable hits

    Each hit ships a reason.

  • Regular updates

    Lists refreshed on a regular cadence.

What changes for your team
Significant
reduction in false positives
Real time
screening on every party
Global
coverage across major sanctions regimes
Explainable
every hit
Plan your evaluation

Evaluate sanctions screening against your workflow.

Agree the parties, lists and decisions in scope before comparing results. Bring a representative sample to the evaluation.

Coverage

Identify the customer, business and payment-party records you need to screen, the relevant jurisdictions and the lists used in your program.

Matching and review

Test known matches and similar-name non-matches. Review the identifiers, source evidence and handling of unresolved cases.

Operational fit

Discuss list updates, rescreening triggers, reviewer permissions, retained decisions and integration requirements with our team.

Evaluate on your data

Benchmark false positives on your own sample.

Results depend on the data and configuration, so test them on yours before you commit.

Your data, your baseline

We benchmark alerts and true matches on a sample of your own records, so you can compare results against your current provider.

Free for 30 days

Agreed volumes and sandbox access. No card, and no automatic move to a paid plan.

No long lock-in

Monthly or annual terms, ended on 30 days’ notice. Your case history and audit trail leave with you.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Which sanctions lists does BriteBase screen against?

The major sanctions regimes: OFAC in the US, Canada, the EU, the UK under OFSI, Australia and APAC jurisdictions, including comprehensively sanctioned geographies, vessels, ports and restricted securities, plus trade restriction lists such as the US BIS lists, the World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms and Individuals, and the Canada Export Controls List. Screening runs on every customer and payment in real time rather than on a delayed or batch basis. Breadth of coverage matters because sanctions exposure is rarely confined to a single jurisdiction alone: a customer or counterparty can be clean against a domestic list while carrying exposure on a foreign one, particularly for cross-border payments or a customer base that spans multiple countries. Because this same list coverage also feeds company screening and payment screening, a party is checked against the same breadth of lists regardless of which screening surface triggered the check.

How does it reduce sanctions false positives?

Spelling variants, homonyms and stale records can turn one true risk into dozens of matches, since a common name can appear across multiple sanctioned individuals or entities, and transliteration differences alone can generate several spellings of what is actually the same listed party. Agentic entity resolution collapses these near-duplicate matches into one scored identity, designed to deliver a significant reduction in false positives without dropping the genuine hit hiding among them. This distinguishes resolution from simple fuzzy matching: fuzzy matching alone tends to produce more candidate matches, not fewer, because it is deliberately permissive about spelling variance, whereas resolution scores identity coherence across those candidates to determine which ones actually represent the same underlying party before a human ever has to adjudicate the difference between a coincidental homonym and a true, if imperfectly spelled, match.

Are sanctions hits explainable?

Yes. Each true hit is escalated with a plain-language rationale and source citations, for example an exact name and date-of-birth match against a specific listed entity, rather than a bare confidence score with no stated reasoning behind it. This is deliberate: a reviewer, and later an examiner, needs to understand specifically why a party was escalated, not just that an algorithm assigned it a high score, since a score alone cannot be defended in an examination the way a stated rationale can. The explanation is generated as part of the same entity-resolution process that clears the false positives around it, so the reasoning behind an escalated hit and the reasoning behind a cleared near-duplicate both draw from the same underlying evidence, keeping the two decisions consistent with each other rather than the product of two disconnected processes.

See sanctions screening in action with BriteBase.

See our platform screen a live customer against global sanctions, PEP and adverse media data. Book a demo with our team.