Watchlist

What is Watchlist?

Compliance teams need to know if customers, partners, or transactions are linked to sanctions, PEPs, enforcement actions, or adverse media. Because these risks change constantly, missing updates can create legal, regulatory, and reputational exposure.

Watchlist Screening and Monitoring helps prevent this by checking against trusted global sources and continuously monitoring for changes, using advanced matching to surface real risks without overwhelming teams with false positives.

Available: 🌍 Globally

Enrichment	Input fields	Signals returned	Coverage	Best for
Watchlist Screening	Individuals, businesses, vessels, aircraft, bank accounts, crypto handles	- Name Match Scores (exact, fuzzy, phonetic, ML) - Entity Match Scores (0–100 likelihood) - Match status (potential, true positive, false positive) - AI-generated case summaries	Global	AML/KYC compliance, sanctions checks, risk detection at onboarding
Watchlist Monitoring	Same as above, with portfolio import support	- Daily alerts via webhooks or email - Continuous monitoring against sanctions, PEPs, and adverse media - Workflow automation and audit trail	Global	Ongoing due diligence, background monitoring, risk operations

Business and operational outcomes

What you can expect from using Socure’s Watchlist Screening and Monitoring product:

78% fewer false positives on average than competing solutions
80% case reviews on average, from 10–15 minutes to 2.5 minutes
60% reduction in resource and staffing costs
Reduced exposure to legal and reputational damage

Use cases

👤 Individual Screening & Monitoring

• Check customers at signup to block sanctioned or high-risk individuals

• Monitor in the background to catch new risks post-onboarding

🏢 Business Screening & Monitoring

• Vet companies, nonprofits, and other entities before partnerships

• Detect changes in ownership or control that introduce new risks

• Automate ongoing due diligence for AML/KYC compliance

💳 Payment Screening & Monitoring

• Screen senders and beneficiaries against routing number, account number, BIC, and crypto handle

Unique features

Watchlist Screening

Detect and prevent financial crime by checking individuals, businesses, and other entities such as vessels, aircraft, bank accounts, and crypto handles against global sanctions lists, politically exposed person (PEP) registries, and adverse media.

This is a core control for AML and KYC compliance.

Watchlist Monitoring

Ongoing monitoring ensures you don’t miss new risks when lists are updated. The platform delivers:

Daily webhooks or email alerts when a monitored entity is added to or updated on a list
A case management dashboard for reviewing and dispositioning matches
Workflow automation to streamline Tier 1 and Tier 2 reviews
A complete audit trail to evidence compliance decisions

Watchlists and data sources

Screen a wide range of entities — including individuals, businesses, vessels, aircraft, bank accounts, and crypto handles — against trusted global sources.

Sanctions and Watchlists: 1,400+ global sanctions and enforcement lists
Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs): 2.4M profiles of political figures and close associates
Adverse Media: Millions of articles across 100,000+ reputable sources
Custom Watchlists Coming Soon: Screen against proprietary or internal lists

Algorithms and machine learning scores

Name Match Score: Exact, fuzzy, phonetic, and ML-based matching (including LSTM neural nets for cross-script variation).

Example: “Alejandro Fernandez” ≈ “Алехандро Фернандез” ≈ “AL3HANDRO FERN4NDETH”

Entity Match Score: 0–100 likelihood score factoring in name similarity, DOB, location, cultural context. Proven to reduce false positives by up to 70%.

AI Case summary

An AI-generated summary that provides analysis on the likelihood of a match being a true positive or false positive.

Get started

Configure watchlist policies
Create a workflow
Create an evaluation for screening

Watchlist features

Matches & scores
Source lists
Case management

Integration

Request schema
Handle results
Webhooks

Go deeper

Portfolio import
Workflows & roles
Troubleshooting

Key Terms

Term	Definition
Input Data	Raw identities or entities you submit for screening—like a person, business, or asset (e.g., wallet, vessel). May include name, date of birth, or social-security number.
Entity	A normalized identity that consolidates multiple records into one profile. Example: “Rob Mehdi,” “R. Mehdi,” and “Robert Mehdi” all resolve to one unified entity.
Listed Entity	A record from an official sanctions or watchlist source (e.g., OFAC, UN list). These are entities formally flagged by regulators or enforcement bodies.
Watchlist Screening	The process of checking identities against risk-based watchlists—sanctions, PEP registers, adverse media, and more.
Politically Exposed Person (PEP)	An individual in a prominent public or political role (e.g., senior government official, military leader, or SOE executive).
Relatives and Close Associates (RCA)	People closely connected to PEPs or sanctioned individuals—such as family members, business partners, or other close contacts.
Adverse Media	Information from public/media sources suggesting risk (e.g., reporting on legal issues, fraud, corruption, or other negative activity).
Match	Outcome when input data is compared to listed entities. • Potential match (initial hit): flagged for review. • True positive: confirmed as the same entity. • False positive: similar but not the same.
Alert	A reviewable item generated when a potential match occurs. This is flagged for human verification.
Decision	The resolution of an alert by a reviewer—confirming whether it’s a true positive or false positive.
True Positive	A verified match between your input data and a listed entity.
False Positive	A match that appears plausible but is incorrect—often due to common names or overlapping attributes.