One-stop protection: Getting the most out of CLEAR Adverse Media with sanctions

In the modern business landscape, institutional efforts to mitigate risk and prevent fraud are incomplete without a structured, strategically coherent policy for screening adverse media.  

Adverse media screening helps organizations to identify potentially harmful information—in news stories, websites, online publications, and social media—indicating that a customer, client, or supplier is involved in suspicious, illegal, or unethical activities.  

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The importance of adverse media screening

Financial institutions conduct adverse media screening during due diligence to determine if new customers are involved in fraud, corruption, money laundering, terrorist financing, or other illicit endeavors.  

Likewise, companies incorporate adverse media screening into their risk management programs to evaluate new vendors, anticipate competitive threats, and prevent business dealings with individuals or organizations whose poor reputation or involvement in criminal activity might damage the brand.  

Why manual methods are not worth the risk

In the professional world, organizations must actively use adverse media screening to identify potential risks and prevent them from escalating into larger legal, financial, or reputational issues. Regular media screening and monitoring can also help fill information gaps that traditional due diligence and compliance processes might overlook.  

To fully benefit from media screening, organizations should develop a structured adverse media screening policy and program. Without such a program, their risk management strategy can introduce additional risks. Manual searches and inconsistent screening methods often result in important information slipping through the cracks. Worse, relying on a system with inadequate search capabilities leaves organizations unaware of unknown threats, undermining strategic intelligence. 

To develop an effective adverse media screening program, organizations need a way to conduct specific searches while also monitoring the entire media landscape for potential red flags. This is impossible to do manually, so companies need software that is specifically designed for continuous, high-level media screening and automated monitoring.  

CLEAR: The gold standard in adverse media monitoring

The Adverse Media platform included in Thomson Reuters CLEAR investigative software is one of the best tools available for this kind of media screening and monitoring. Indeed, CLEAR is the foundation on which thousands of financial institutions, corporations, and law firms build their adverse media screening policies and programs.  

CLEAR has several key features that distinguish it from other, lesser media-screening solutions:  

• CLEAR’s automated, real-time monitoring capabilities and customizable risk parameters allow organizations to fine-tune their search programs to fit the organization’s individual needs. 
• CLEAR provides automated, 24/7 coverage of news channels, websites, and social media and issues real-time alerts for negative media events involving matters that fall within the organization’s pre-defined search and risk parameters. 
• Though CLEAR’s media coverage is comprehensive, the program includes advanced filtering capabilities that enable users to focus searches on the most relevant media sources, reducing false-positive alerts. 
• In addition to adverse media, CLEAR screens against international sanctions lists for violations, suspicious activity, politically exposed persons (PEPs), and associations with sanctioned individuals, organizations, or countries. 
• Reports can be downloaded and saved for compliance and audit defense

Fast, easy-to-read results 

Another reason CLEAR is so popular is that all of CLEAR’s adverse media elements are presented on a single page, with a dashboard that shows results in real time and includes links to the original media source material.  

Once an organization’s risk parameters, media categories, and alert functions are determined, CLEAR continuously monitors the proscribed media universe and shows real-time activity on the dashboard. The results are easy to read, and alerts can be viewed immediately.

Adverse media screening: a step-by-step guide

CLEAR is only one component of an effective adverse-media program, but such a program can certainly be built around CLEAR’s capabilities. Following are the basic steps for developing an effective adverse media screening program using CLEAR: 

1. Identify Verification Needs: Whether the task is verifying new customer information, vetting new vendors, or identifying other risks, it is important to identify what type of information an organization is looking for and why. Repeatable search information—such as legal names, addresses, business details, beneficial ownership information, etc.—can be automated, along with additional keywords. Specific searches can be done manually. Protocols and processes for media searching can then be established.  
2. Define Screening Criteria: Scanning all available media all the time is impractical and can result in an avalanche of false positive alerts. To narrow search parameters, save time, and yield more relevant results, users should carefully define screening criteria and risk parameters. CLEAR includes dozens of media categories (e.g., news outlets, publications, blogs, social media platforms) as well as topical risk tags on everything from sanctions violations and fraud to human trafficking and embezzlement. All screening criteria can be tailored to meet the user’s needs.   
3. Determine risk tolerance: Every organization has a different risk profile. Risk tags for media in CLEAR can be prioritized according to the organization’s individual preferences. Once risk tolerances are determined, independent search results are given a “relevance score” starting at 1 and potentially exceeding 100; a higher score indicates a higher risk. Alerts are flagged according to the selected risk level. 
4. Train risk personnel: To obtain the best results, personnel using the CLEAR platform need to be trained to navigate search criteria, conduct searches, read the dashboard, evaluate search results, and determine the actions necessary to investigate and mitigate possible risks.  
5. Assess results: CLEAR is excellent at identifying potential risks, but only a knowledgeable human analyst can determine whether a risk is credible and merits further investigation. CLEAR saves time by mapping an organization’s risk universe, including adverse media, freeing up time for investigators to pursue high-risk cases and conduct enhanced due diligence.  

Comprehensive risk mitigation and fraud prevention

A structured adverse media policy and well-defined screening procedures are the key to an effective adverse media screening program. The benefits of such a program accrue over time as users become accustomed to the system, risk parameters are refined, and monitoring of the organization’s media ecosystem becomes routine. 

Elevate your organization’s risk management strategy with CLEAR Adverse Media. Experience the power of customizable negative news and sanctions screening that streamlines your investigative process and safeguards your interests. 

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