Developed in partnership with Omnicision, Sanctions Testing helps large financial institutions tune their filters in line with their risk appetite, and prove its effectiveness and efficiency.

Regulators increasingly demand that financial institutions monitor and report on the efficacy of their sanctions screening solutions. Evaluating such solutions encompasses the configuration of transactions to be screened, attributes to be considered, flexibility of the solution to change as sanctions lists are updated daily and markets evolve.

"SWIFT's solution addresses each of these considerations," says Nancy Atkinson, Senior Analyst, Aite Group. "With its focus on the global community of financial institutions, SWIFT is uniquely positioned to create utility solutions that many banks can utilize, reducing the cost per bank and the overall costs to the industry of providing such capabilities".

A number of top institutions have already expressed their interest in this solution. Dr Andreas Burger, Compliance Manager at Commerzbank, the first bank to have signed on for the service, confirms, "Effectiveness and efficiency of our sanctions filtering is of paramount importance. The new SWIFT service helps us with constantly testing and improving our systems and processes in order to develop a best-in-class solution."

Atkinson adds, "Sanctions Testing can do more than evaluate financial institutions' screening capabilities; it can guide financial institutions in configuring their screening processes to optimize the results".

Sanctions Testing enables banks to:

Fully automate the creation and maintenance of test data and results analysis;
Measure the effectiveness of systems and reduce the number of false positives;
Produce performance reports down to the smallest detail; and
Obtain real-time alerts and navigation on changes to sanctions lists.

"We at Commerzbank have a high level of trust in the new service and we are convinced to have SWIFT as a stros a s a strong and experienced partner by our side", says Burger.

Earlier this year, SWIFT launched Sanctions Screening, a centralised service for small- and medium-sized financial institutions.