Fast and effective customer screening for Solicitors

Why AML screening matters to Solicitors

Solicitors often handle significant amounts of money. This makes them targets for criminals and funders of terrorism who seek to launder money by using their services to disguise transactions.

There are two main sets of legislation that solicitors and law firms must understand and adhere to. 

  • The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (and any subsequent amendments) sets out the main anti-money laundering (AML) requirements
  • The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) and the Terrorism Act 2000 (TACT) cover the need to report suspicious activity to the National Crime Agency

As a result, solicitors are likely to face AML regulations if they provide legal or notarial services on behalf of customers (including planning, executing, or assisting) for both financial and property transactions.

Common risks faced by Solicitors

Providing legal services for the buying and selling of real estate property or business entities that use the proceeds of crime, giving criminals the appearance of legitimacy.

The managing of client money, securities or other assets for criminals hiding behind complex company structures involving multiple countries and bank accounts to disguise the real purpose of a transaction and hide its beneficial ownership.

The opening or management of bank, savings or securities accounts, the organisation of contributions necessary for the creation, operation or management of companies, and the creation, operation or management of trusts, companies, foundations or similar structures, could all be used to fund terrorist activities.

Breaching sanctions by conducting business with a sanctioned individual or entity is a criminal offence.

Regulatory fines, penalties, and even reputational damage.

Accelerating compliance for Solicitors

RiskScreen is simple and intuitive to use – speeding up your processes, reassuring your auditors, and improving satisfaction of staff and customers alike.

CONDUCT AML SCREENING

Start your initial screen with a search of a company or individual name across global sanctions, PEP and watch list information provided by leading data provider, Dow Jones. Red flags indicate matches to investigate.

SEARCH LIVE ADVERSE MEDIA

Search the whole of the world wide web - from mainstream news to blog and social posts - for references to your subject. Exclude irrelevant URLs, and highlight mentions of interest.

GENERATE REPORT

Consolidate your findings in a single report for future reference or audit. Include your assessment of your subject's risk level, the reasons why, and links to relevant media and supervisor comment.

An AML solution designed for Solicitors

RISK-BASED APPROACH

By using RiskScreen you can be sure you're embedding the risk-based approach into your business processes and meeting your regulatory requirements

NO USER LIMIT

We price by searches, not seats, so no need to share passwords or worry about your user numbers, wherever in the world they might be

ALIAS NAMES

Dow Jones' data includes alias names for 'bad actors', while our unique search tools take into account all common name variants, across multiple languages

IMAGES

Images help users identify whether potential matches are true or false - and our data sets include colour pictures when available

MRZ ANALYSER

RiskScreen's optional MRZ analyser allows you to analyse and validate passport MRZ data

CUSTOMISABLE SOURCES

Improve review times by excluding irrelevant URLs from your company's adverse media searches

See RiskScreen Core
in action

See how easy it is to use RiskScreen Core – from conducting initial AML screening and adverse media searches, through to production of the final report. Ease of use means happier staff, and it’s one of the reasons our customers love us.

FAQs

Scroll down to see our simple pricing plans. We charge by searches and not seats, so once you have chosen a plan and puchased credits with a credit or debit card, you’re up and running and ready to go!

All types! Our intuitive interface and entry-level pricing means it’s the logical decision for smaller or transaction-based businesses such as or estate agencies. But we have many large enterprise customers who use RiskScreen Core alongside our RiskScreen Batch product to ascertain the risk levels of their prospects at onboarding stage, and then to monitor this risk level on an ongoing basis. To get a demo of how the two might work together, please contact us.

No! In a recent survey conducted by RiskScreen, over 65% of respondents in the banking industry said they still use Google or other search engines for their unstructured adverse media searches. They may sometimes get the right results, but it’s neither consistent nor comprehensive (unless you have the time to trawl through thousands of pages of results). RiskScreen’s adverse media tools connect directly to several major search tools and apply a proprietary combination of sensitive terms to ensure key results are returned. These results are then deduplicated, ranked and presented back to the user in a digestible format – to maximise the chance of unearthing relevant insight on your subject, and to make the process of acting on it as easy as possible.

Yes! You should expect to conduct enhanced due diligence (EDD) when you find a customer or prospect has come back as high risk. RiskScreen Core allows you to conduct ‘Pro’ searches on higher-risk individuals, which include deeper web searches into content sets such as the Panama Papers or FinCen files.  Your searches are consistent, scalable and fully auditable – so your team will always get credit for the work they’ve done.

Once you have an account setup with RiskScreen Core, you will be able to login and top-up your search credits. 

Buy RiskScreen Core online now

250

SEARCH CREDITS

Perfect for smaller businesses, our entry-level offer provides the searches you need to keep your business safe at an affordable level.

£105 /monthly

£1050 /annually

500

SEARCH CREDITS

Our most popular online bundle allows you to conduct 500 screenings (and you can top-up any time).

£135 /monthly

£1350 /annually

1000

SEARCH CREDITS

Perfect for larger businesses, our 1000 search credit bundle provides the searches you need to keep your business safe at an affordable level.

£225 /monthly

£2250 /annually

Visit the store to view our full range of bundles.
Existing customer looking to top-up? Log in now.

At RiskScreen we work with hundreds of companies around the world from a wide range of sectors – both regulated and unregulated.

Any screening technology is only as good as its underlying data. That’s why we work to find the best providers, ensuring you get screening matches you can trust.

Resources

The latest news, commentary and events from RiskScreen. For industry insight, visit our AML insight hub, KYC360.

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Company

RiskScreen was founded by experts in financial crime. It’s because of this unrivalled subject matter expertise that companies choose to partner with us.