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.
If monitoring is active, the account will be checked against our database of high-risk individuals nightly at 3am UTC.
You can filter by source and status.
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?
There are two ways to add accounts: either by running a Risk check, or capturing them through a verification flow.
Risk
When you select the anti-money laundering check, you will see an option to Enable alerts. Selecting this will add an account for this person to the Alerts table.
Verification flow
When creating or editing a verification flow, under Enrichments, you can enable Alerts when you add the Anti-money laundering check. Whenever someone is verified using this flow, they will have an account added to the Alerts table.
You cannot retroactively turn on Alerts for people that have already completed a verification in a flow that did not have Alerts enabled.
How can I stop monitoring an account?
In the Alerts table the toggle can be used to stop monitoring an account. You can also re-enable monitoring for accounts that used to have them.
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.
Clicking on the account name will bring up their full Account page. Unacknowledged alerts appear at the top. You will see their name, key details, and an overall match score. There are two types of matches:
A weak match will have a score lower than your threshold. They should still be checked to make sure it's not a true match.
A strong match has a score higher than your threshold and should be carefully inspected.
Clicking the name on a match will show you their full profile. You may see details like their name, nationality, birth date, and notes on their known history.
Clicking a list tag will show you more information about that list. You can see the purpose of the list, what region the list is maintained in, and how often it is updated.
You can acknowledge an alert to indicate that you have dealt with it, usually through enhanced due diligence. Acknowledged alerts will be moved to the bottom of the page. There will be a note of who acknowledged it and when.
How can I be notified without looking at the Alerts table?
You can notify external systems of a new account matches 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
Can I customise how Alerts works?
In the Alerts tab in Settings are several options to control how Alerts work for you.
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.
Toggle the lists being monitored. All lists are enabled by default, and this is the recommended setup.
Add a Webhook URL or Email address to receive notifications outside of the Vouchsafe platform.
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