This article covers the new Alerts experience, which is currently available in preview.
Alerts is Vouchsafe's real-time ongoing monitoring solution.
It will let you know if someone you have verified or made a smart lookup on is added to any of the 300 global data sources we monitor, covering nearly two million records.
This is a regulatory requirement for any firm that must follow Money Laundering Regulations, including banks, lenders, law firms and accountants.
How do alerts work?
From the Alerts tab of the dashboard, you can see all accounts you have ever verified in Vouchsafe, along with any current and historic alerts against each one.
You can filter by source and status.
If monitoring is active, the account will be checked against our database of high-risk individuals nightly at 3am UTC:
What do the statuses mean?
Accounts that have never had an alert are Clear.
If the account appears on a new monitoring list, it will move into the New alert status, and can then be Acknowledged to indicate that it has been reviewed and dealt with.
What data does Vouchsafe search?
We search:
People who hold high-profile public offices, who are at greater risk of impersonation
Sanctioned individuals that UK firms must not do business with
Those wanted or connected to international or financial crime
Those who are barred from being company directors
Known associates of any of the above
How do I start monitoring an account?
When you run a smart lookup or set up a verification flow, you have the option to enable the anti-money laundering check.
Once that check is on, you can either enable ongoing alerts there and then:
You can also enable it at a later date from the Alerts tab.
How can I stop monitoring an account?
When someone ceases being a customer, you normally do not have to keep monitoring them.
You can switch ongoing monitoring off from the Alerts tab.
What happens when I get an alert?
If an account is added to one or more new lists, Vouchsafe will generate an alert, which you can see from the Alerts tab of the dashboard.
You can also notify external systems of a new alert using webhooks.
Every alert contains:
the matched entity name and type (person, company, organisation, etc.)
the datasets the match was found on (for example, UN sanctions or the OFAC SDN list)
a risk score showing the confidence of the match
You can acknowledge an alert to indicate that you have dealt with it, usually through enhanced due diligence.
Can I customise how alerts works?
You can adjust the sensitivity threshold, which represents how similar an entity on a monitoring list needs to be to one of your accounts before it triggers an alert.
You can also adjust the lists being monitored.
We recommend leaving all lists on to begin with, but if some are irrelevant to your use case, you can disable them.
Via the API
You can also monitor and control alerts using the Vouchsafe API. There are endpoints for:
listing accounts
seeing the alert history of every account
toggling monitoring on and off