AML Screening & Monitoring Service — Ensure Global Compliance

PEP screening is the process of identifying Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) – individuals who hold or have held prominent public positions (such as government officials or their close associates). These persons are considered higher-risk because their influence can make them targets for bribery or corruption. Regulators in many jurisdictions require PEP checks as part of AML programs to mitigate risks of corruption, bribery, and money laundering. In practice, if a customer is flagged as a PEP, it doesn’t automatically bar doing business with them; instead, it triggers enhanced due diligence (EDD) and closer monitoring of that relationship. Thorough PEP screening via Bynn's AML helps compliance teams detect potential red flags early and document proper oversight for high-risk clients.

Sanctions checks (or sanctions screening) involve comparing customers against official government watchlists of sanctioned individuals, entities, and countries. These lists (such as U.S. OFAC, UN, EU, or UK sanctions lists) contain parties involved in terrorism, narcotics trafficking, proliferation, or other illegal activities.

Screening customers against sanctions lists is vital because doing business with a sanctioned party can result in severe legal penalties and reputational damage. In fact, financial institutions are legally required to perform sanctions screening to remain AML compliant (for example, all U.S. financial institutions must comply with sanctions screening requirements as part of AML/KYC regulations).

Bynn's sanctions screening software helps automate this process, ensuring no customer is unknowingly a prohibited party and that any potential matches are flagged for review immediately. This protects the organization from facilitating transactions with criminals or blacklisted parties and demonstrates compliance to regulators.

Adverse media monitoring (also known as negative news screening) is the practice of searching for any negative or unfavorable information about a person or business across news outlets, websites, and other media sources. In simple terms, it means screening a customer’s name against global news databases to see if they’ve been mentioned in connection with fraud, financial crime, or other high-risk activity. This process allows firms to spot potential problems before they become directly involved or suffer reputational damage by association.

Unlike sanctions or PEP lists (which are official and finite), negative news can be vast, so robust AML solutions use advanced search algorithms and AI to filter out irrelevant hits (e.g. excluding articles not actually indicating wrongdoing). Including adverse media checks in your AML program provides a more holistic risk view – if a client has, say, repeated mentions in fraud investigations or corruption scandals, you’d want to know even if they aren’t on a sanctions list. By catching such red flags through ongoing media screening, compliance officers can investigate further or apply enhanced due diligence as needed.

AML regulations vary by country, but they share common core requirements. Broadly, financial institutions must implement a risk-based AML program that includes thorough customer due diligence, ongoing monitoring, and reporting of suspicious activities. For example, under the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), regulators require firms to have risk-based AML programs, conduct Customer Due Diligence (CDD), and file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) for any suspected money laundering.

In the EU, the Anti-Money Laundering Directives (like 5AMLD/6AMLD) mandate similar controls, and many countries follow international standards set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). FATF’s guidelines urge organizations worldwide to adopt fundamental measures: perform risk assessments on customers, implement Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures (to verify identity and source of funds), and continuously screen and monitor customers against PEP lists, sanctions lists, and adverse media as part of their compliance program.

Compliance officers should stay updated on local laws (such as FINRA/SEC rules in the US, or FCA regulations in the UK) and ensure their company’s AML policy includes all required elements: customer identification, record-keeping, internal controls, independent auditing, employee training, and clear procedures for handling any red flags. Adhering to these regulations not only avoids fines but also helps shut down illicit finance networks.

Automation can dramatically improve the efficiency of AML processes by handling repetitive checks at speed and scale. Modern AML software can instantly verify identity documents, cross-check customers against watchlists, and monitor transactions in real-time – tasks impossible to do manually.


For instance, advanced solutions can process millions of client names against sanctions/PEP databases in seconds, using a fully automated workflow that blends machine accuracy with human oversight for any tricky cases.

This means compliance teams get preliminary screening results fast, and only need to review the alerts that truly merit attention. Automation also enables ongoing monitoring without extra effort: once a customer is in your system, the software continuously re-screens them and will automatically notify you of any changes (like if a client gets added to a sanctions list or negative news hits). By reducing manual workload and flagging risks in real time, automation frees up compliance officers to focus on investigating and resolving issues rather than combing through data. It also improves the customer experience — legitimate users pass checks more quickly, while risky ones are swiftly flagged for review, thus maintaining both compliance and efficiency.

Yes. Bynn's AML verification platforms are built to integrate seamlessly with your existing compliance workflows and systems.

We offer flexible integration options such as REST APIs, SDKs, and out-of-the-box connectors, allowing you to plug their screening and monitoring capabilities directly into your customer onboarding software, banking system, or case management tools.

For instance, you can configure an integration so that whenever a new customer completes identity verification in your system, they are automatically screened against sanctions, PEP, and adverse media databases without manual intervention.

We also support batch screening and ongoing monitoring via API, meaning your customer list can be continuously checked in the background.

Additionally, we include dashboard and reporting interfaces that complement integration efforts – you might choose to use the web dashboard for case management or leverage it in parallel with your internal tools.

This kind of flexibility ensures that adopting an AML solution won’t upend your current processes. Instead, it will enhance them: you get unified compliance workflows where alerts and results flow into one place, enabling faster decision-making and a more streamlined compliance operation.

Bynn’s AML solution currently updates around 300 datasets daily, some even hourly. These include global sanctions lists (OFAC, UN, EU, UK, and others), law enforcement lists (Interpol, Europol, FBI), industry-specific exclusion lists (medical bar list, casino bar list), and more. Our solution ensures compliance by covering every required AML list worldwide.

Want to explore our datasets? You can view and search them for free by creating a test account. No cost, no commitment – just discover how comprehensive our coverage is firsthand!

False positives are one of the biggest frustrations in AML compliance. If your current provider is flooding your team with hundreds of irrelevant matches, you’re wasting valuable time manually reviewing innocent individuals—just because their name happens to match someone on a watchlist. This outdated, text-based approach is broken and leads to compliance fatigue, inefficiencies, and increased operational costs.

At Bynn, we’ve solved this problem with AML Face Match—a game-changing biometric verification system that goes beyond names and actually verifies identities.

Instead of guessing whether “John Smith” is the same person on a sanctions list, Bynn’s AI-powered biometric screening cross-references applicant photos with images found in sanction lists, PEP databases, law enforcement records (Interpol, Europol, FBI), and publicly available sources. This means that if there’s a photo linked to a listed individual, our system can instantly confirm whether it’s a match or not, significantly reducing false positives.

But what about cases where no official photo exists? That’s where our AI goes a step further. If a sanctioned individual’s record lacks an image, our AI automatically searches trusted online sources (such as government press releases, news reports, and official sanction publications) to retrieve an image where available.

What’s the Impact?

While it’s true that not every watchlist entry includes a photo, Bynn’s Face Match still dramatically reduces the workload for compliance teams. Instead of manually reviewing long lists of flagged names, your team will only need to focus on a fraction of those cases—ones where a strong biometric match suggests actual risk.

✔️ Fewer False Positives – Instead of sifting through irrelevant matches, your team gets reliable, photo-verified results
✔️ Faster Investigations – Minimize manual work by prioritizing real risks
✔️ Higher Accuracy – Reduce compliance errors and increase confidence in screening decisions

With Bynn’s AML Face Match, compliance isn’t a guessing game. You’re verifying identities, not just checking names. Let your team focus on what matters—real threats, not noise.

Want to see it in action? Sign up for a free test account and experience AML without the false positives.