Screening TransWatch

The Screening Transwatch suite provides the underlying core technologies for each of our solutions. Core capabilities include:

• Open, flexible, high performance data interfaces – our ETL tools allow your transaction monitoring solution to be easily and robustly integrated with your existing core systems.
• Risk scoring module – giving you control over how you interpret and manage risk; at a customer, account, transaction and rule level. This guarantees that you can take a consistent risk based approach to transaction monitoring. This risk scorecard is available even if risk scores are not available within the core systems that data is fed from.
• Intelligent transaction monitoring capabilities – multiple pre-built rule scenarios are included with each of the solutions; built upon high risk transaction patterns and profiles. Each of these can be easily parameterized to meet your specific requirements.
• List matching – covering a variety of “Hot Lists”, among them sanctions and PEP lists, high risk countries, high risk currencies, high risk postcodes and tellers.
• Standardised interfaces to external lists - including OFAC, HM Treasury. In addition to names, potential matches are scored using a variety of additional factors, including date of birth, address and nationality. This greatly reduces false positive rates.
• The ability to approve customers and/or accounts, either globally or for individual rule scenarios – this greatly reduces false positives for authorized entities.
• Flexible queue management - find the cases that need your attention and prioritise your workload. This includes notification, even if you are not in the system.
• Inbuilt workflow-driven Case Management – ensuring a consistent, audited approach is taken to investigating each exception.
• Single view of the customer – a complete “cockpit” view of each customer, their accounts and transactions. This ensures that each alert is placed in context; for example relationships with other customers and third parties (solicitors, brokers, introducers etc.), KYC data and past case history.
• Visualisation - graphical representation, right within Investigator, of customer and account behaviour. The graphs provide true graphical insight into customer behaviour and anomalies.
• Integrated reporting – both for paper and online submission of suspicious transaction reports and comprehensive, configurable management information reports.

Screening Transwatch’s KYC provides a powerful, consistent and flexible solution to track the collection and validation of required identity documents. From first customer contact through to account opening, Screening Transwatch’s KYC is a “non-disruptive” mid-office KYC process that leaves front office staff to handle customer contact, collect customer information and identity documentation and own the customer relationship.

Screening Transwatch’s KYC solution is based upon the automation of the workflow process for categorising, collecting, evaluating and validating customer identity documents.

• Categorise – the new customer relationship and evaluate the appropriate identity documents.
• Collect - the documents in the front office and pass these to Screening Transwatch. The customer application forms and identity documents can be stored either electronically within Screening Transwatch’s database or as filed paper copies.
• Evaluate – each item of documentation and verify its authenticity.
• Validate – the customer upon successful completion of this verification process, “release” them within front office system to now conduct transactions.

This centralised approach offers a number of benefits over a more typical front-office based collection and validation of customer identity documents. It helps ensure consistency by ensuring trained compliance experts perform the identity validation. Less training is required for Front Office staff, who can focus more of their time on building profitable customer relationships. Central electronic storage of identity documents is likely to present less of a risk to the financial institution. The solution can be tailored to meet the specific requirements of the financial institution as well as legislative and regulatory requirements. A pre-defined data interface is provided to control how customer data is passed to and from front office systems to Screening Transwatch. This interface is easily tailored to meet specific requirements. Screening Transwatch’s KYC provides a powerful, consistent and flexible solution to track the collection and validation of required identity documents. From first customer contact through to account opening, Screening Transwatch’s KYC is a “non-disruptive” mid-office KYC process that leaves front office staff to handle customer contact, collect customer information and identity documentation and own the customer relationship.

Loader seamlessly and efficiently integrates Screening Transwatch with the typically diverse IT systems within a financial services organisation, to ensure high performance, resilience, flexibility and ease of maintenance.

Screening Transwatch operates on the basis of regular data feeds. The data is extracted from existing IT systems, transformed as required and loaded into the Screening Transwatch database. This provides a consolidated view of the customer, their account holdings and their transactional behaviour, in a single location.

• Extract – this process can be in the form of file-based interfaces (delimited files, fixed format, XML) where data is extracted from core systems and passed to Screening Transwatch or direct database connections where Screening Transwatch fetches data directly from the other systems.
• Transform – this process performs any required reformatting of source data, for example date/time formatting, number formatting, string manipulation, data lookup and substitution.
• Load – this process passes the transformed data to the Screening Transwatch database, intelligently detecting whether to insert or update.

There are several benefits to this approach:

• High performance – the entire load process is designed to support high data volumes and high availability whilst remaining highly reliability. The application is multi-threaded to ensure maximum throughput.
• Resilience – auditing, logging and error management are incorporated as standard. If the error is recoverable or minor (e.g. a malformed row) the data load will continue as is, logging and reporting the rows with errors. If the error is unrecoverable (e.g. a feed system down or a file is missing) the load will fail safe. The ability to recover is engineered into the Loader. When re-run, the Loader will automatically “catch up”.
• Flexibility – the process is database independent; simple to deploy, maintain and change. Whilst Data Loader is normally used for inbound data interfaces, it can also be used for extracting data from Screening Transwatch database for feeding elsewhere within the organisation.
• Maintainability - A Graphical front end is provided for defining and managing the specific data interfaces. Data Loader can also perform core file management tasks (e.g waiting for files to arrive from remote systems, concatenating files together, moving files, deleting files) and data management (e.g. purging unwanted data).

Screening Transwatch’s Profiler measures how each customer and account behaves and how they may be expected to behave, via a series of statistical summaries. These are based upon past behaviour, predicted behaviour, peer groups or risk profiles. These profiles subsequently form the basis of certain detection algorithms and provide insight into the customer.

A customer or account that is behaving differently – either to past patterns, to predicted patterns or to their peers - is often of interest and worthy of deeper investigation. Using breakpoint analysis, Profiler does just this, factoring in multiple risk profiles at multiple levels.

• Actual profile – this is an individual statistical profile of each account, based upon its past behaviour. Screening Transwatch will automatically identify and alert if any individual account suddenly exhibits a dramatically divergent pattern of use, for example in value, volume or transaction velocity. These profiles are automatically maintained, updated on a daily basis for any account that has any transactions the previous day.
• Predictive profile – this enables you to define how you expect an account or customer to behave. This can be derived from aggregated analysis of past behaviour of similar customers/account or can be based upon KYC information. Screening Transwatch will identify and alert if behaviour is not as predicted. Analysis can factor both actual and predicted behaviour into consideration simultaneously.
• Peer profile – this extends analysis to the aggregated behaviour of “peers”. The definition of what constitutes a peer is controlled by the financial services organisation, but may include such elements as customer type, customer location and account type. Multiple peer measures can be used if the customer or account fits in multiple peer groups. This enables like-for-like comparisons, for example car dealers with car dealers, restaurants with restaurants etc. An account or customer’s behaviour can be visualised graphically against its peers.
• Risk profile – this provides a real-world mechanism to support a true Risk Based Approach for transaction monitoring. Risk profiles are applied to customers, accounts and transactions, based the risk they pose to the individual financial services organisation. This permits rule exceptions to be “scored”, based upon your experience of your business. A low risk transaction pattern conducted by a high risk customer may be alerted where otherwise it would not be. If risk scores are available from feed source systems within the organisation these can be incorporated into the customer data by the Loader component.

All of these profile measures are designed to be easily managed, applied and assimilated. Each profile is calculated or applied automatically as a stage in the overall load-profile-analyse process.

Analyser is the engine at the heart of Screening Transwatch. It performs sophisticated transaction monitoring to highlight potentially suspicious activities. Analyser delivers high quality exceptions for high-risk behaviour, whilst minimising false positive rates.

Analyser uses a number of refined detection techniques to identify and alert behaviour that is likely to represent elevated risk.

• Watch List Monitoring - the following watch lists are provided as standard (these can be augmented with bank-specific lists): Customers (e.g. sanctions, PEPs, blocked customers), Locations (countries, postcodes), Accounts (e.g. blocked accounts, watched accounts), High risk currencies, Transactions (e.g. unauthorised transaction types), Watched staff
• Transaction Monitoring – identifying patterns that are potential indicators of, or precursors to, financial crime as well as profile analysis – of actual behaviour patterns, predicted behaviour and peer groups to identify likely break points.
• Risk Scoring – all exceptions are risk scored using a sophisticated algorithm that takes into consideration the risk posed by the customer, the account, transactions and rule scenario. This ensures that investigation effort is focused where the highest risk lies, providing a workable, real-world mechanism to support a true Risk Based Approach. This can be used in as simple a manner or as sophisticated a manner as you wish.

More than 80 pre-defined detection scenarios are provided as standard, all of which can be quickly and simply tailored and parameterised to meet specific requirements. The detection scenarios can adapt to changing patterns, typologies and regulatory requirements. Thomson Reuters actively update the available detection scenarios as new financial crime typologies emerge or as regulatory requirements change. These libraries are made available retrospectively to existing customers. New rules can be added if the customer licences the optional Screening Transwatch Toolkit.

Past monitoring results can be used to modify future monitoring behaviour in a “self-learning” process. If a customer is repeatedly breaching given rules at a low level this may be used to elevate their risk score.

Analyser is designed to provide manageable high performance – it is highly scalable, to provide the same high level of protection regardless of the size of the financial services organisation.

Screening Transwatch is supplied with Detection Designer, a graphical component that provides the ability to define, test and manage the detection scenarios.

Investigator ensures that alerts are raised, routed and managed in a consistent and timely manner. This entire case management process is workflow-driven, secure and audited. All customer, account and transaction data is available instantly to provide context to each and every exception.

Investigator provides a sophisticated, intelligent environment to manage the exceptions triggered by the detection scenarios and also those raised by branch or front office staff. All the necessary supporting information upon which to base a decision is instantly available.

• Workflow – processes support all facets of the investigation, ensuring compliance with business and regulatory requirements. These comprehensive and customisable workflow processes can incorporate third party systems and data if required.
• Case Management – all relevant information relating to a case is easily captured and recorded, including secure electronic storage of document scans, faxes, correspondence, emails and similar within the Screening Transwatch database. Cases are tracked, prioritised and managed. Cases can be linked together, additional parties can be linked to the case where necessary and cases can be merged together. If necessary, manual cases can be created, for example to record branch suspicious activity reports.
• Disclosure – Financial Intelligence Unit reporting is automatically generated and managed by Screening Transwatch. This includes paper-based disclosure or fully electronic submission.

Sophisticated queue management is provided as standard. This includes management of individual work queues, group queues, service level management and full “Query By Example” capabilities. Cases can be efficiently routed, referred, tracked, prioritized, reviewed and organised. In-built notification is provided as standard, so that you are alerted to all cases, even if you are not logged to in Screening Transwatch.

Screening Transwatch can clearly show relationship networks between customers – e.g. family members, business associates, intermediaries and other informal links. Where relevant, information is presented visually, to assist in its assimilation, for example account graphs. The complete history of all past exceptions is always on hand. All of this is presented in a simple to use notebook metaphor that encourages instant drill-down.

Audi Trail – each action undertaken as part of each investigation is automatically fully and securely audited. There is a comprehensive encrypted user access model that ensures full accountability and no unauthorised access to the data contained within the system.

List Manager allows you to efficiently control, manage and update your watch lists including: internal “Hot lists”, regulatory and third party. These lists group together logical data items to be monitored or to be used as the subject for detection rules, enabling the rules to be completely dynamic. These lists also serve to reduce false positives by containing “white list” information.

Financial crime is a highly dynamic area. Events occur and risks change on a daily basis. Most financial services companies have a plethora of lists to manage and monitor as part of their financial crime strategy. These range from the typical lists of sanctioned entities and PEPs, through watched accounts to high risk regions/countries and currencies.

Screening Transwatch’s List Manager provides the ability to react dynamically to events, risks and threats. “Hot Lists” can be easily managed and instantly deployed.

List Manager provides a powerful tool for managing the contents of the Hot Lists, by enabling appropriately-authorised individuals to administer the lists – editing list entries, filtering/sorting entries, printing and importing/exporting contents via Microsoft Excel.

A range of pre-built Hot Lists are supplied as standard:

• In-House – Approved ATMs, Approved Branches, Approved Customers, Approved Transaction Types, Unauthorised transaction types, Watched Accounts, Watched Countries, Watched Currencies, Watched Customers, Watched Tellers
• Third-Party – Automated loaders for Complinet, World-Check
• Regulatory - Automated loaders for UK Treasury, OFAC, EU Sanctions

These loaders are able to identify new or changed records and monitor accordingly, not only checking new customers against the full contents of all relevant lists, but also retrospectively checking all customers against any new or changed list entries.

Hot Lists are configurable by appropriately authorized users. Bank-specific lists can be added as required.

Reporter is Screening Transwatch’s management information module. It provides a series of pre-built reports as well as the ability to create new reports using a point-and-click interface. All information and knowledge contained within the Screening Transwatch database can be surfaced and presented for MIS purposes.

• Management Information - Reporter is designed to be simple to use but powerful enough to provide insight from the data contained in the Screening Transwatch database. It has a comprehensive range of pre-built management information reports, all of which can be customised.
• Graphing - comprehensive capabilities are provided for a variety of graphs, including bar, stacked bar, output, line, pie, multiple pie, stacked area and waterfall
• Scheduling - any report can be scheduled for automatic execution and the results distributed, either to a secure file location or via email. This can be at any time of day on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis.

A comprehensive series of reports are provided as standard. In addition, custom reports can be defined by the bank, using Reporter’s graphical report definition tool. This is a point and click interface covering table selection, table joining, field selection, selection criteria, sorting, grouping, field labelling/ordering, data manipulation etc. Any report can be made available only to an individual or may be shared by all.

Reporter supports output as List, Cross-Tab and Pivot reports. All reports and graphs can be printed and exported to Excel. Report definitions can be imported and exported via XML.

Administrator is Screening Transwatch’s system configuration and management component. Because so much of Screening Transwatch is customisable, Administrator provides a comprehensive interface to control a variety of aspects of the solution. Whilst it will obviously be most heavily used when initially configuring and deploying the solution, it will also be used for day to day running of your Screening Transwatch solution, to change configuration behaviour, to monitor performance and to manage ongoing changes.

Among others, the following aspects of the Screening Transwatch suite are managed via Administrator:

• Audit Trail - A complete history of all security events for each of the applications in the Screening Transwatch suite. This covers both successful and failed Log On and Log Off events, user password changes, user access right changes, configuration changes, rule changes, parameter changes, customers/accounts added to and removed from white lists and watch lists, report execution.
• Code Lookup - Allows for complete flexibility to define and manage lookup lists within Screening Transwatch. Lookup lists are used to translate field values into more meaningful, user-friendly descriptions. These can be used throughout the application.
• Configuration Settings - Allows for configuration of application specific settings. This controls the behaviour, look and feel and a variety of other functional capabilities of the solution. There are in excess of 1000 potential configuration options.
• Data Interface and Batch Reports - Provides feedback information on the status of the daily batch processes. This includes Data Loading as well as Rule Execution runs. Problems (such as malformed or missing data) and performance monitoring information are automatically recorded.
• Risk Scores – Manages the configuration of the risk scoring process. This manages the risk scorecard is use within the organization and ensure that all data are correctly risk weighted.
• Rules - This is the dictionary of all rules used with the Screening Transwatch application. Details include the relative risk weighting of each rule, feed source systems applicability, service levels and duplicate checking configuration.
• Rulebook Parameters - Allows for the viewing and modification of the parameters used by each of the detection rules. This permits simple, organization-specific configuration of standard rule scenarios.
• Scheduled Tasks - Repository for managing all scheduled tasks (such as data loading, rule execution and automatic report execution/distribution.
• User Management – Maintain user logons and their access privileges as well as the same for Workgroups.

Administrator is typically only used by only a select few individuals within the Financial Crime and IT departments within the financial institution.