CounterpartyLink has augmented its legal entity and counterparty intelligence service through a partnership with RDC, a provider of risk and compliance data for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance, Politically Exposed Persons protection, corruption, fraud and crime protection, vendor screening and monitoring, and credit risk monitoring.
The partnership is a response to feedback from CounterpartyLink customers and will simplify and shorten due diligence processes, as well as strengthen users’ compliance programmes and help to protect them from reputational damage.
James Redfern, managing director of CounterpartyLink, explains: “Adding RDC’s risk relevant records to CounterpartyLink’s legal entity intelligence service shortcuts the process of getting core information on customers and counterparties from CounterpartyLink and then putting the data through another engine to screen for negative lists, sanctions and risk alerts. The result is savings in money and time, as well as improved operational efficiency.”
While CounterpartyLink already offers a sanctions screening service that periodically screens entity data against the OFAC and HM Treasury sanctions lists, sanctions screening for KYC needs to be more frequent and must screen individuals, which is where RDC comes in.
Says Rupert de Ruig, managing director, EMEA and Asia-Pacific at RDC: “Proactive screening and monitoring of legal entity data is paramount in today’s regulatory environment. Combining CounterpartyLink’s information with RDC’s global risk-relevant database will ensure financial institutions meet AML and KYC regulatory requirements and are alerted to potential commercial or reputational risk.”
Another benefit of the tie-up is access to hierarchical structures around individual entities, allowing screening of not only a company, but also its hierarchy up to its ultimate parent.
The enhanced CounterpartyLink service will deliver flat files that have been pre-screened by RDC. The company plans to refresh the data on a daily basis and will provide weekly alerts to customers to show any changes in the universe of entities they follow. Notifications of changes will also be available on CounterpartyLink’s web portal.
The company is running a pilot of the enhanced service and plans to roll it out on a client-by-client basis to 80 existing users as well as new customers. Redfern concludes: “CounterpartyLink customers are mostly banks and brokers that use our service for risk or compliance, so the collaboration with RDC is absolutely relevant.”
