About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

SmartSearch Releases High-Risk Country Report Service in Response to Sanctions Against Russia

Subscribe to our newsletter

SmartSearch, an anti-money laundering (AML) specialist, has released a high-risk country report service in response to the introduction of sanctions against Russia. The service enables regulated businesses to scan existing clients and check for residency or citizenship in Russia, Belarus, or any other high-risk countries.

The reporting tool instantly checks all clients that the regulated business has previously run searches on, and returns matches for those that have a connection to the specified country.

The aim is to support those companies looking to quickly and efficiently evaluate their existing client bases following sanctions placed on a number of Russian individuals and businesses.

The search also provides a list of all UK business searches on companies where a corporate structure is returned and an entity within the structure is operated in a high-risk country.

“Potential reputational and financial damage for those working with clients connected to Russia or Belarus, mean regulated businesses have been reviewing their existing clients,” says Martin Cheek, managing director of SmartSearch. “This new service will give businesses peace of mind that they aren’t working with anyone they shouldn’t be.”

Headquartered in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, SmartSearch’s AML verification platform conducts individual and business searches, both for the UK and international markets, with automatic worldwide sanction and politically exposed persons (PEPs) screening. Th platform can be accessed using a browser or API and offers full sanction, PEP and adverse media screening, as well as ongoing monitoring.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Navigating a Complex World: Best Data Practices in Sanctions Screening

As rising geopolitical uncertainty prompts an intensification in the complexity and volume of global economic and financial sanctions, banks and financial institutions are faced with a daunting set of new compliance challenges. The risk of inadvertently engaging with sanctioned securities has never been higher and the penalties for doing so are harsh. Traditional sanctions screening...

BLOG

Data Automator Xceptor Offers Platform Ready-Made for AI

Dan Reid is not surprised that Xceptor, the data automation giant he formed two decades ago, finds itself at the vanguard of a change in the way financial institutions regard and use documents. The rapid and accurate parsing of information from paper- and PDF-based reports has been made possible thanks to recent developments in artificial intelligence. The volume...

EVENT

RegTech Summit New York

Now in its 9th year, the RegTech Summit in New York will bring together the RegTech ecosystem to explore how the North American capital markets financial industry can leverage technology to drive innovation, cut costs and support regulatory change.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2025 – Thirteenth Edition

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a unique and practical guide to capital markets regulation, regulatory change, and the data and data management requirements of compliance across Europe, the UK, US and Asia-Pacific. This year’s edition lands at a moment of accelerating regulatory divergence and intensifying data focused supervision. Inside,...