1 Introduction

Oracle Financial Services Transaction Filtering is a Sanctions screening system that identifies Individuals, entities, cities, countries, goods, ports, BICs, and Stop keywords that may either be suspicious, restricted, or sanctioned with relation to a financial transaction that is processed through the Transaction Filtering application. The application enables you to integrate with any clearing or payment system, accept messages from the source system, and scans them against different watch lists maintained within the application to identify any suspicious data present within the message. The Transaction Filtering application can scan messages which are in the SWIFT, ISO20022, or Fedwire category.

Financial Institutions are required to comply with regulations from different authorities. Some of them are as follows:

• USA PATRIOT Act
• U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), USA
• Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), Canada
• Financial Action Task Force (on Money Laundering) (FATF/GAFI)
• EU Commission
• Country-specific authorities

While the regulations can differ between countries, the spirit of regulatory intervention is uniform, and that is to hold financial institutions responsible and accountable if they have been a party, intentionally or unintentionally, to a criminal or terrorist-related transaction.

Sanctions include the withholding of diplomatic recognition, the boycotting of athletic and cultural events, and the sequestering of the property of citizens of the sanctioned country. However, the forms of sanctions that attract the most attention and are likely to have the greatest impact are composed of various restrictions on international trade, financial flows, or the movement of people.

Transaction Filtering against government-regulated watch lists and internal watch lists is a key compliance requirement for financial institutions across the globe. At the turn of the century, Financial Institutions (FIs) were expected to identify customers who were either sanctioned or who lived in sanctioned countries and identify any transactions which were associated with these customers. FIs are now expected to also identify any suspicious dealings and parties involved in the transaction, and more recently identify information that is deliberately hidden or removed.

The Transaction Filtering application delivers a strong, effective filter that identifies all sanctioned individuals or entities with true positives and exploits all available information (internal and external) to reduce false positives and therefore minimizes the operational impact on FIs.