Benefits of Restricted Party Screening Software

by Henry Jos Travel Consultant

Today’s advanced and complex supply chains place immense demands on companies and need concurrent management of the many distinct areas. They also need to keep production in sync with client orders, manage inventory and oversee the movement of products to their desired destination. Compliance is paramount in business and needs to be incorporated at relevant stages of the business process.

One specific area of compliance relates to laws that regulate the interaction with restricted or denied parties. A restricted party can be an individual, company, or organization prohibited by federal law to receive export items, information, or technology. Given the degree of restricted party entities, in addition to the fast-paced logistics processes found in most organizations, screening a customer base manually may be impossible, Restricted Party Screening is the perfect solution.

Benefits of Restricted Party Screening:

To resolve false positives that flow from the name-screening algorithms.
To make qualified judgments and build compliance records and rationale for managing hits from name-screening tools.
To follow a defined standard for making compliant judgments where names on a denied parties list may be similar and agencies are reluctant to disclose identity.
To help decide which international blacklists to screen against.

In order to manage the risk of interacting with restricted parties, many companies are left with no choice, but to screen both their customers and their parties involved in a transaction against the list of restricted parties published by governments and agencies.

Following steps will help in setting up an effective Restricted Party Screening:

Search Settings

Search settings are key to Restricted Party Screening. It can reduce false positives and ensure you’re not missing on alerts due to typos or names with multiple possible spellings. It helps in maximizing the screening efficiency by understanding what different settings do and determining when you ought to use them and when it would be more efficient to turn them off.

Audit recording

Audit recording is integral to Restricted Party Screening. If there is no record of the restricted party screening activity in an audit, it’s as though it never happened. Details regarding who you screened, when you screened and the result of that screening are vital to passing of your audit. Day to day audit helps keep your transactions legal.

Rescreening

Government watch lists tend to change often – even a longtime customer can suddenly appear as a denied party, regular rescreening is the only way to know whether your transactions are compliant each and every time.

Timeliness

Everything is time-bound. You need to access the most recent, up-to-date restricted or denied party lists or your screening results simply can’t be trusted. In this dynamic industry environment, receiving updates as and now when they are published is vital in ensuring effective screening.

Selecting RPLs (Restricted parties list)

Categorize the number of lists you use by analyzing your industry, where your customers are located, and the products you export, and accordingly select the RPLs that best suits your industry or business.

Take into account your business model; look at the regions where you sell. Analyze what all industries your company markets to. All of these variables will help you develop the type of restricted party screening that best suits your company needs.