European Law Firm, SJ Berwin, Deploys Datanomic’s dn:Director Sanctions/PEP Screening Software

UK (SANEPR.com) June 20, 2008 -- AML and Data Quality specialists, Datanomic Ltd, today announced that leading European law firm, SJ Berwin LLP, has adopted and deployed its Sanctions/PEP Screening solution as part of its anti-money laundering strategy to support its compliance with the EU 3rd Money Laundering Directive. SJ Berwin went live with the Datanomic solution in January 2008. The firm uses Datanomic as a major tool for risk assessment and ongoing monitoring.

As a European law firm with offices in Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Munich, Paris and Turin, SJ Berwin has more than 170 partners and 500 lawyers. The firm advises on a comprehensive range of legal services including Corporate Finance, Commercial, Real Estate, Finance, Reconstruction & Insolvency, Financial Services, Litigation, Intellectual Property, Employment & Pensions, EU & Competition and Tax.

“We were looking for a solution to issues raised by the 3rd Money-Laundering Directive in relation to risk assessment and ongoing monitoring and we were pleased to find that Datanomic had a well thought through process for helping us to deal with those issues,” said Kate Scott, Head of Practice Protection at SJ Berwin LLP.

“Operating in the European and international market place in today’s commercial environment requires compliance with supervisory regulations and legislation. This includes having the proper systems in place to ensure that you are not unknowingly facilitating money laundering,” said Terry Lawley, Project Delivery Manager for SJ Berwin LLP.

SJ Berwin embarked on an initial scoping exercise with Datanomic in early January 2008 before full deployment in house that month. Datanomic is now used in conjunction with World-Check’s Data File across the firm.

Regulatory initiatives, such as Basel II, MiFID and the 3rd EU Money Laundering Directive, have placed stringent information management requirements on organizations within the regulated sector. MLROs face increasing Know Your Customer challenges. The scale, complexity and cost of screening customers against published sanctions lists (‘Watch Lists’) and named Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) lists is becoming a major administrative burden for compliance departments. The legal requirement to continually and accurately screen their customer base presents organisations with new operational challenges. Traditional matching methods require a smarter, more sophisticated approach.

Datanomic’s Sanctions/PEP Screening solution enables organisations to rigorously and accurately identify heightened risk entities within their customer bases(s). It relieves the burden of manual or semi-automated client screening by enabling automated screening in an easy-to-use/easy-to-implement solution designed for both the Compliance team and IT.

Inadequate information exposes organisations to both financial and reputational risk. Datanomic includes best-practice rules templates for matching against a variety of different lists, including World-Check and has worked with leading financial institutions to deliver a highly intelligent client screening solution that is designed for ease of use by non-technical users.

“One of the things that impressed me with Datanomic was how fast the solution is,” concluded Lawley. “We were surprised at how easy it was to implement.”
In addition to significantly reducing complexity and administrative overhead, Datanomic’s Sanctions/PEP Screening solution delivers industry best practice, providing a base from which management can develop tailored policies and procedures appropriate to their business. By reducing the amount of manual matching required, Datanomic’s solution frees up resources to focus manual effort on more complex tasks. Moreover, improving the effectiveness of enterprise data applications further enhances corporate performance and competitive advantage.

Datanomic’s Sanctions/PEP Screening solution delivers a rapid return on investment and fast implementation. The solution can be acquired either on an annual subscription basis or via outright purchase.

About Datanomic
Datanomic’s holistic approach to compliance and data management enables its growing list of European and North American blue chip clients to rapidly achieve a Return on Investment by exposing and correcting deficiencies in information the business relies upon. Our clients come from a wide spectrum of industries including financial services, telecommunications, government, professional services and engineering.

http://www.datanomic.com

For further information, please contact:

Sophie Geering
Datanomic Limited
Tel: +44 (0)1223 228412
Email: sophie.geering@datanomic.com

Vanessa Land
Devonshire Marketing
Tel: + 44 (0)870 242 7469
Email: vanessa@devonshiremarketing.com