OFAC Compliance

The SDN Scanner is a cost effective automated solution for banks and other financial institutions seeking to comply with the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) regulations and other government deny lists including the Bank of England list, the European Union list, and the Bureau of Export Administration Denied Persons and Denied Entities list. A custom list permits entry of an institution's own deny list. The product also supports the Accuity enriched OFAC database.

The product was first implemented in 1995 on the HP (formerly Tandem) Nonstop platform for scanning of domestic and international money transfers against the OFAC list. The product has since evolved into a suite of products and services including:

  • Lighthouse SDNScanner, our web application provides compliance with OFAC, HM Treasury, European Union, Debarred Parties, Denied Persons, Foreign Terrorist Organzations, and FinCEN sanctions lists, and others,
  • Web Scanning Services, providing the means to integrate scanning functionality into your back office applications via web transactions over a secured connection, using the same scanning engine and set of sanctions lists as our browser application,
  • HP Nonstop product integrated with funds transfer, letters of credit and ACH applications,
  • Windows based product for scanning of batch files in conjunction with an international letters of credit application and SWIFT payments,
  • Enterprise-wide Windows based compliance product designed for interoperability with any banking application in both batch and interactive modes, and,
  • Windows desktop product supporting ad hoc queries of text strings or files against any of the supported deny lists.

Each of the products supports a Windows Client for Scanner operations, list acquisition and management, and evaluation and disposition of possible deny list references.

Key Features

  • Proven filtering algorithm minimizes the possibility that a deny list entry will be missed, yet also minimizes the number of false positives where scanned text matches a deny list entry but is not a deny list entry in context.
  • Generalized scanner with open access using a single API.
  • Connectivity to external databases.
  • Custom List supports entry of an institutions own deny list (custom includes), and custom excludes to define specific rules to help minimize false positives.
  • Batch processing for scanning of large databases.
  • Interactive operation for transaction based scanning.
  • Scalable architecture suitable to a wide range of transaction volumes.
  • Fault tolerant configuration for business critical applications.
  • Extensive audit trail of scanner activity.