Sanctions Screening is a shared service that screens financial transactions against selected lists, providing small and medium-sized institutions with a reliable, cost-effective means of testing their compliance with sanctions regulations.

Sanctions Screening features a centrally-hosted screening engine from an industry-leading vendor, FircoSoft, and a list management tool. SWIFT manages the service and provides ongoing sanctions list updates. Since its launch in 2012, the Sanctions Screening service has been adopted by more than 230 customers in 88 countries.

"Sanctions Screening demonstrates the strong demand for SWIFT's financial crime compliance solutions that help customers increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their compliance activities while reducing cost and risk," says Nicolas Stuckens, Head of Sanctions Compliance Services, at SWIFT. "Its success has paved the way for additional compliance services that leverage SWIFT's core strength - community-driven solutions built on global standards and operational excellence."

"We chose Sanctions Screening because it is effective, simple to implement and easy to use," says, Kheireddine Mermioui, Head of IT and SWIFT, Arab Maghreb Bank for Investment and Trade (BAMIC ALGER). "Sanctions Screening is very effective, user friendly, works well with our other systems, and is supported by SWIFT's excellent reputation for security, reliability and customer service."

Jorge Osvaldo López García, Deputy Compliance Director, Grupo Financiero Banorte, adds, "SWIFT's Sanctions Screening is an easy to implement, user friendly and cost effective service that gives our anti-money laundering programme added assurance. SWIFT provides the tool that enables us to mitigate potential risks in our day-to-day business."

Banks using the Sanctions Screening service can send their transactions to a screening engine, which filters the messages in real time and checks against the ba time and checks against the banks' selected sanctions lists. The service covers the majority of the messages used in cross-border financial transactions and is expected to support all types of financial messages, including SEPA payments, in 2015.