Politically Exposed Persons are high-risk customers for financial institutions due to the risks of corruption, money laundering, and bribery. There are several PEP criteria, according to international and local regulators. Therefore, it is not easy to identify and classify PEPs. FATF and the European Union frequently publish new guides to identify PEPs. If we look at the definition of a Politically Exposed Person in general, they are close people to commit corruption and bribery crimes because of their authority.
Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering procedures are vital for detecting and preventing crimes such as money laundering, terrorist financing, corruption, and bribery. Therefore, AML and KYC regulations have become mandatory obligations for organizations at risk. Therefore, companies should identify their new customers and whether their existing customers have PEP and create a control program. Regulators fine organizations that do not carry out PEP controls. Financial institutions that violated PEP screening and sanction check obligations between 2008 and 2018 were fined $27 billion.
PEP Screening on Customer Onboarding
PEP screening is one of the essential controls in the customer onboarding process. When businesses are opening a new client's account, businesses need to determine whether the client is a PEP. The business verifies the identity of the customer through Know Your Customer procedures. It then determines the customer's risk level with the sanction and PEP scanning. Politically Exposed Persons are allowed to open accounts, of course. The purpose of PEP screening is to detect PEPs and create a control program suitable for those people.
PEP Screening On Customer Transactions
The whole world has faced PEPs that have abused their powers from the past to the present. Therefore, politicians, ministers, officers, military personnel, judges, and prosecutors who take bribes using their powers must be identified and punished. Bribery harms the justice of that country, and the public's trust in justice is lost.
PEP scanning in money transfer, wire transfer, and payment transactions enable the detection of suspicious transactions. Financial institutions have to make PEP scans to the buyer and sender in the financial transactions they mediate. The high amount of financial transactions carried out by PEPs are suspicious transactions. Reports should be kept about suspicious activity. These reports are called suspicious activity reports . These suspicious transactions should be reported to authorized units.
PEP Screening with Sanction Scanner
Sanction Scanner provides a PEP Screening Solution , which makes PEP scans of liable organizations fast and secure. Sanction Scanner collects and enriches PEP data of 200 countries. Organizations can scan their customers in PEP data of two hundred countries within seconds. Sanction Scanner's powerful API support reduces the workload of organizations by automating PEP control processes. You can contact us or request a demo to scan your customers between structured and enriched global AML data. Accelerate your AML compliance processes at affordable costs.
