Adverse media, also known as negative news screening, is the monitoring of public and external data sources on negative news or statements about a person (BO) or a company. It can be an important part of Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) processes for financial institutions.

The main components for adverse media are:

• Identifying who must be screened and how often;
• Screening and detection (manually or through automated tools;
• Online customer survey;
• Evaluating results;
• Deciding on actions based on identified matches.

Defining UBO

On 6 April 2018 the draft implementing decision Wwft 2018 was published in the context of the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act (Wwft). In this draft decision, among other things, a further interpretation is given to the concept UBO (Ultimate Beneficial Owner). Although the draft decision specifically concerns a further implementation of the Wwft, it is also relevant for the so-called UBO-register that has yet to be introduced.

Our private investigators define an UBO manually, using our many years of experience as a private investigation agency and the (paid) databases available to us, own designed research tools, as well as the ‘dark web’.

For Adverse Media iRC is used as a tool. Fast, efficient, anonymous and GDPR-proof.