SWIFT announces that its Sanctions Screening service has surpassed the 230-customer milestone just two years after its introduction as the first solution in SWIFT’s financial crime compliance services portfolio.
Sanctions Screening is a shared service that screens financial transactions against selected lists, providing small and medium-sized institutions with a reliable, cost-effective means of testing their compliance with sanctions regulations.
In Africa, there are currently almost 60 customers – including four central banks – using Sanctions Screening with more new customers in the pipeline. Banco Nacional de Angola is one of the most recent new clients, implementing the Sanctions Screening service to help the country meet its financial crime compliance obligations in May this year.
As part of Angola’s drive to adopt global best practice and to ensure that the country remains an attractive destination for international investment, another five banks in addition to the BNA will implement Sanctions Screening in Angola.
Other countries have seen similarly broad take-up of Sanctions Screening as part of a community approach to addressing concerns about financial crime and meeting global regulations, including Ghana and Sierra Leone.
“Sanctions Screening demonstrates the strong demand for SWIFT’s financial crime compliance solutions that help customers increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their compliance activities while reducing cost and risk,” says Nicolas Stuckens, head of Sanctions Compliance Services, at SWIFT.
“Its success has paved the way for additional compliance services that leverage SWIFT’s core strength – community-driven solutions built on global standards and operational excellence.”
Sanctions Screening features a centrally-hosted screening engine from an industry-leading vendor, FircoSoft, and a list management tool. SWIFT manages the service and provides ongoing sanctions list updates. Since its launch in 2012, the Sanctions Screening service has been adopted by more than 230 customers in 88 countries.
“Sanctions compliance is expensive and complex, and the penalties for non-compliance can be very severe,” says Hugo Smit, head of Africa South, SWIFT.
“SWIFT’s Sanctions Screening is easy to implement and cost-effective; it requires no hardware or software and no operational maintenance of multiple lists that change regularly and provide our customers with a peace-of-mind that their compliance solution meet international industry standards. SWIFT is committed to developing such solutions that address industry challenges.”
Banks using the Sanctions Screening service can send their transactions to a screening engine, which filters the messages in real time and checks against the banks’ selected sanctions lists. The service covers the majority of the messages used in cross-border financial transactions and is expected to support all types of financial messages, including SEPA payments, in 2015.
