Data and AI leader SAS in collaboration with technology partner Neterium – a visionary, API-native regtech company – have announced the general availability of SAS Real-Time Watchlist Screening. The cloud-native solution, with scalable offerings for screening entities and payments, combines real-time and batch list screening. Its best-in-class, explainable matching algorithms reduce false positives while also enhancing transparency and confidence.

“The world’s geopolitical landscape is highly dynamic and laden with evolving risks that make real-time insight into entities and transactions critical for banks and other obligated firms,” said Stu Bradley, Senior Vice President of Risk, Fraud and Compliance Solutions at SAS. “SAS innovated this solution with Neterium, melding our mutual strengths, to bring greater efficiency, productivity and trust to the anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) technology landscape.”

Institutions that fail to comply with regulatory bodies, such as the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the European Union and the United Nations and more, face potentially severe financial and legal penalties and significant reputational damage. To help firms avoid conducting business with sanctioned entities, terrorist organisations or criminal enterprises, SAS’ new, yet proven financial crimes compliance solution features:

    As-a-service list management. Advanced list management integrates seamlessly with existing platforms through standardised REST APIs. Automated update and deployment of subscribed watchlists eliminate the need for manual intervention. This highly efficient as-a-service offering minimises false positives and significantly reduces analyst workload while continuously updating and refining its data, ensuring decisions are based on the most current information available.
    End-to-end capabilities. Deployed on SAS® Viya®, SAS Real-Time Watchlist Screening delivers real-time screening, data orchestration, alert triage and case management, and operational reporting capabilities in an advanced, all-in-one solution. Monthly features and functionality updates ensure continuous development and improvement.
    Holistic matching. The solution evaluates all available data points (e.g., name, gender, date and place of birth, identifiers, geolocation, etc.) in a single step using AI-enabled meta-matching and meta-scoring. It offers seamless integration with commercial watchlists, while also accommodating private allow and deny lists – augmentable by SAS-coded rule authoring. Fuzzy matching combined with semantic matching algorithms help overcome common naming challenges, like transliteration, cultural affinity detection, regional spelling variations, aliases and use of non-Latin characters.
    Customisation and auditability. Customisable screening parameters and scoring mixes allow users to adapt and fine-tune the solution to match their changing needs and risk appetite. Full audit trails, secure and explainable AI, and glass-box models help firms meet shifting regulatory requirements across jurisdictions. Simultaneously, whether implemented in a public or private cloud environment, SAS’ scalable, microservice-based architecture adds flexibility and optimised cost management.

“The depth and breadth of SAS’ financial crimes compliance platform is unparalleled in the market,” said Florence Vicentini, Chief Commercial Officer at Neterium. “By integrating Neterium’s leading-edge watchlist screening capabilities into the SAS platform, we’ve created a powerful synergy that equips SAS customers with an unmatched solution to help meet their regulatory mandates and mitigate ever-changing financial crime risks.”

An evolutionary partnership breeds a revolutionary sanctions screening solution

General availability of SAS Real-Time Watchlist Screening comes two years after the collaborators’ first joint deployment at Orange Bank in late 2022. The custom, real-time sanctions screening initiative by SAS and Neterium – which ultimately provided the framework for the new solution – significantly strengthened the Paris-based bank’s AML-CFT guardrails.

"Built-in AI and advanced screening technologies improve detection relevance and allow our analysts to monitor a holistic, real-time view of AML risk," explained Deputy CEO of Orange Bank Veronique McCarroll, at the time.

Monika Cwiertnia, Director of Compliance and Financial Crime at Orange Bank, more recently praised the solution as “robust, efficient and effective.”

“SAS and Neterium provide the bank’s analysts a 360-degree view of the AML risk of our clients in one solution: monitoring of the transaction, risk classification of the client, filtering of the prospects and clients, and screening of the transactions,” she said of Orange Bank’s longer-term results.

"We have been screening cross-border transactions and third-party relationships for two years,” added Hafida El Issi, Manager of AML-CFT Risk Management at Orange Bank. “It takes around 10 milliseconds to screen a third-party or cross-border transaction. And because we are an online bank, SAS Real-Time Watchlist Screening does this 24/7, 365 days a year. We reduced the number of false positives by 65% compared to the previous solution, and we keep on improving these results."

The innovation continues

With the release of SAS Real-Time Watchlist Screening, SAS and Neterium continue to push the innovation envelope. Both tech trailblazers earned Category Leader designations in the Chartis RiskTech Quadrants for Watchlist and Adverse Media Monitoring, 2024.

“As reflected across Chartis' quadrants and rankings, SAS continues to stand out and innovate by delivering solutions based on very strong core technology: its advanced analytical capability and highly scalable and flexible Viya platform,” said Nick Vitchev, Research Director at Chartis. “With this strong core technology stack, SAS can provide powerful and scalable solutions that deliver decisioning at impressive speed and scale, and with its Data Ethics Practice – a possible future industry gold standard – SAS is very much a trailblazer.”

SAS Real-Time Watchlist Screening fits seamlessly into SAS’ other AML-CFT compliance solutions, as well as its broader ecosystem of risk, fraud and compliance solutions.

Learn more about SAS’ fraud and financial crimes compliance solutions for banks.

About Neterium

Neterium is a Belgium-based regtech company dedicated to transforming global financial crime prevention. Its cloud-native SaaS watchlist screening solutions leverage cutting-edge technology alongside deep compliance expertise. Neterium’s flagship products, Jetscan and Jetflow, offer unparalleled efficiency, accuracy and scalability, seamlessly integrating through a standardized API. These solutions deliver ultra-low latency and massive throughput, setting a new standard in scalability and performance for financial institutions worldwide.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative software and services, SAS empowers and inspires customers around the world to transform data into intelligence. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®.