ComplyAdvantage provider
The ComplyAdvantage provider allows you to use ComplyAdvantage to screen your customers for anti-money laundering (AML) activity. Because it is an external provider, you need an account with ComplyAdvantage to use it.
AML refers to measures designed to prevent and detect illegal activities involving the hiding or transfer of funds obtained through criminal means. It includes practices such as verifying customer identities, monitoring transactions, and reporting suspicious activities to authorities. AML helps combat money laundering, terrorism financing, and other financial crimes.
ComplyAdvantage can screen your customers against various data sources, including:
- Sanctions, Warnings and Fitness & Probity
- Sanctions (such as OFAC SDN List, HM Treasury Sanctions List)
- Warnings (such as US Immigration and Customs Wanted)
- Fitness & Probity (such as US System for Award Management Exclusions)
- Politically exposed persons (PEPs)
- PEP Class 1 (such as heads of state, national parliaments, national governments)
- PEP Class 2 (such as regional governments, regional parliaments)
- PEP Class 3 (such as senior Management and boards members of state-owned enterprises (SOEs))
- PEP Class 4 (such as mayors and members of city councils)
- Adverse media (such as property, financial AML/CFT, fraud-linked, Narcotics AML/CFT, violence AML/CFT, terrorism, and others)
If hits are found in any of these categories, then the risk score of the customer will be increased. Depending on your AML risk policy, you may need to take actions, such as conducting additional due diligence or blocking the customer.
For more information about these data sources, see More information, below.
Connecting
To connect the ComplyAdvantage provider, you need an account with ComplyAdvantage. They will provide you with an API key. Once you have it, in the Dashboard menu, select Settings > Providers. The Providers page is displayed. If you don't have an account with ComplyAdvantage, contact ComPilot or ComplyAdvantage directly.
Follow these instructions to connect it.
Click Connect on the pane for ComplyAdvantage. A modal will be displayed.
Enter the API key for ComplyAdvantage and click connect.
The ComplyAdvantage provider is now connected and you are redirected to its configuration page.
You can also connect the ComplyAdvantage provider, if it is necessary, when creating a workflow or editing a step. In both these cases, you will still need to enter the ComplyAdvantage API key, and the ComPilot Dashboard will display a modal where you can enter it.
Configuring
The ComplyAdvantage provider has a configuration for each workflow that uses it.
To configure the ComplyAdvantage provider, in the Dashboard menu, select Settings > ComplyAdvantage. The ComplyAdvantage configuration page is displayed. Select the workflow that this configuration will apply to and fill out the form on the page as described in the following sections.
You can also configure the ComplyAdvantage provider when it is used by a step in a workflow. On the workflow detail page, click the gear icon 
. A pane opens on the right of the screen with a form where the configuration can be edited. Fill out the form on the pane as described in the following sections.
API Key
The API Key pane contains the ComplyAdvantage API key that you entered when you connected the provider. You can view the key by clicking Show and copy it to your clipboard by clicking Copy.
Automation Triggers
On the Automation Triggers pane you can:
- Toggle whether user data is screened every time a record is added.
- Toggle whether users are monitored in an ongoing manner.
If users are monitored in an ongoing manner, then users are re-screened every day. If new relevant hits are found:
- The customer status will be set to
To be reviewed. - Already opened alerts will be updated with the content of the new hit and the update will be displayed in the alert's activity log.
- If no open alert is found, then a new alert will be generated.
- On the Customer Screening tab of the customer detail page, the Is monitored field will be updated with the customer's state.
Other configuration
On the ComplyAdvantage Configuration pane you can select the lists that you want to use to screen the user. By default all the lists are selected. This provides the maximum breadth of screening.
You can also set the Fuzziness level. Fuzziness is a matching technique that allows for variation in the spelling of a search term and the entities returned in the search results. A higher fuzziness level will mean more typos or variations will be caught, but it also means that there will be more false positives. The default value is 0.5. For a full explanation of fuzziness, see What is Fuzziness?
Saving changes
When you have entered the correct information, click Save to save your changes.
Disconnecting
You can disconnect the ComplyAdvantage provider by clicking the Disconnect button at the top right of the page.
ComplyAdvantage data
The data from ComplyAdvantage is displayed on the Customer Screening tab of the customer detail page. The ComplyAdvantage data can contain a wide range of information, such as an indication of whether the individual is a politically exposed person, and a summary of adverse media that they appear in. This will allow you to make a decision about whether to do business with this customer.
ComplyAdvantage alerts
Alerts generated by ComplyAdvantage are displayed on the Alerts page in the dashboard. Alerts for an individual customer are displayed on the Alerts tab of the customer detail page.
Alerts generated by ComplyAdvantage can have three levels High, Medium, and Low.
High risk include:
- Alerts where a hit for sanctions was triggered
- Alerts where a hit for PEP was triggered
- Alerts where two or more of sanctions, adverse media, and PEP were triggered
Medium risk include any alert where adverse media is triggered and the media allegations are extremely serious and related to financial crime, such as money-laundering, bribery, corruption, or any other type of financial crime.
Low risk include any alert with adverse media where the allegations are not related to any type of financial crime.
If the alert generated by AML screening confirms that the customer is a PEP, sanctioned individual, or has adverse media, and you reject the customer, ComPilot advises that you do not reveal the reason for the rejection to the customer, but instead say that you cannot onboard them for regulatory reasons.
More information
For more information about ComplyAdvantage, visit the ComplyAdvantage website, the ComplyAdvantage Help Centre, and the ComplyAdvantage API documentation.
For more information about sanctions, see What are sanctions?
For more information about politically exposed persons, see What is a politically exposed person (PEP)?
For more information about adverse media, see What is adverse media or negative news?