PEPs, AML & Adverse Media checks
Available in SDK v1.0+
The PEP, AML & Adverse Media checks capability screens the user against compliance and risk databases. It's typically used in regulated industries (financial services, fintech, gaming, and others) where onboarding checks are a legal or regulatory requirement.
This capability relies on data collected in earlier steps (for example, a name and date of birth from a Scan ID step) to perform the lookup.
Checked categories
Politically Exposed Persons (PEP)
A Politically Exposed Person is someone who holds or has held a prominent public position (for example, a head of state, senior government official, senior military officer, or a close family member or associate of such a person). PEPs are considered higher-risk for potential involvement in corruption or bribery. Checking for PEP status is required by anti-money laundering regulations in many jurisdictions.
Anti-Money Laundering (AML)
The AML check screens the user against sanctions lists and watchlists maintained by governments and international bodies (such as OFAC, the EU, and the UN). A match may indicate that the user is subject to financial sanctions, or is otherwise a prohibited or restricted party.
Adverse Media
The Adverse Media check looks for negative news coverage associated with the user (for example, reporting related to financial crime, fraud, corruption, or other serious misconduct). This check complements the structured PEP and AML lists with signals from unstructured sources.
Relevancy score and rules
Each category returns a relevancy score that reflects how confident the system is that the match is genuine and significant. A common source of false positives is name similarity; many people share names with individuals on watchlists. The relevancy score accounts for this by weighing how many identifying details align beyond the name alone.
For each category, you can configure a threshold:
- If the relevancy score exceeds the threshold, the step can result in Rejected or Manual review
The scores from this capability can also feed into the Trust score capability if it's present later in the workflow.