Politically Exposed Persons
In today’s global economy, engaging in new business relationships is an everyday occurrence. But as these new affiliations take shape, the risks associated with inadvertently facilitating illegal activities grow exponentially. To mitigate such reputational risk, it’s imperative to increase focus on preventing corruption and reporting financial fraud with a well-defined customer identification program. Accuity’s Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) solutions, powered by WorldCompliance, offer the tools you need.
What is a PEP?
There is no universally agreed-upon definition for a Politically Exposed Person. Legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act and organizations like FinCEN describe a PEP as a current or former senior official of government, a major political party or certain corporations and his/her immediate family members as well as any close personal or professional associate of such a person. The intent of performing customer screening for PEP ID verification is to identify those accounts that warrant closer monitoring and further investigation. Additional account screening might uncover funds that are derived from corrupt sources or accounts being used for money laundering or terrorist financing. PEP screening is an additional “know your customer” (KYC) step recommended by the Wolfsberg Group.
Accuity’s PEP Database and Screening Applications
Accuity offers the most comprehensive and detailed database of its kind — the ideal fuel for your PEP EDD processes. The information covers PEPs in over 240 countries and territories. Data is updated on a ongoing basis with an average of 25,000 new profile additions and 5,000 profile updates being made each month. PEP profiles contain unique identifiers including names, aliases, photographs and dates and places of birth plus archived source links, biographies, cross references to family members, associates and affiliated companies to help you positively identify individuals in the most efficient manner possible.
PEP data can be used in conjunction with any of the Screening Applications in Accuity’s Compliance Suite. Our powerful batch filters and look-up applications are flexible, easy-to-navigate tools that further enable your compliance, customer verification and interdiction screening processes. An online PEP solution is also available which can be used as a primary screening tool or to further investigate “hits” produced by your customer filtering procedures.
Online Compliance—Accuity’s Online Compliance, powered by WorldCompliance, is an online look-up tool for identifying and researching Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) and other sanctioned or high-risk entities. Each record details information such as name, aliases, date of birth, place of birth, photographs, positions, family members, associates and company holdings. When available, records are also notated with precise source links to simplify any further due diligence verification, which might be necessary.
For additional information about Accuity’s PEP solutions or our other products and services, contact us or visit other pages on our site.
