Corporate due diligence: Search engines vs. AI-driven software tools Empower corporate investigators with intelligent adverse media screening tools

Companies perform a comprehensive due diligence program prior to acquiring a new company or partnering with another organization. The goal is to determine the risk level of negative news that customers, prospects, investors, and business partners may pose to their organization. Effective, ongoing reviews help them maintain regulatory compliance and protect the reputation of their brand.

Many organizations rely on public search engines like Google and Bing to screen and monitor customers, detect fraud, and assess financial risks. The most popular search engines are free, easy to use and backed by unmatched data sets, so they seem like an obvious choice for research. But search engines may not give you the results you need for your company’s due diligence.

One of the riskiest things a basic internet search can do is fool your organization into believing you’ve done your due diligence when you haven’t.

What are the benefits of using search engines for corporate due diligence?

The internet includes a vast and ever-expanding wealth of information. Today, more than 1.5 billion websites exist around the world, containing 33 trillion gigabytes of data.

Search engines use crawlers to gather information from across billions of publicly available webpages and organize it into a search index. Crawlers follow links on webpages and feed data to the search engine’s index.

When you conduct research about a prospective company, the search engine employs a series of algorithms to display content from its index, ranked according to what it deems to be most relevant for your specific search criteria. Therefore, you’ll find an abundance of information based on your search criteria. When you get the results, you can refine and filter them by date, images, news, and other settings.

Why are AI-driven research tools a better choice for companies conducting due diligence?

With so much data on the internet today, it’s more important than ever for investigators to know where to look, what to look for, and how to determine the quality and integrity of the information uncovered. It’s also easier for criminals to hide information in obscure corners of the internet. More importantly, conventional search engines are not able to access important databases, therefore investigators easily miss vital information.

Because search engines are consumer-oriented, advertising-driven tools, they aren’t built to find the kind of information financial investigators, compliance officers, and anti-money laundering professionals need.

There is a big difference between an internet search for negative news and a search conducted using software programmed to locate hard-to-find information and identify patterns of suspicious activity.

A more efficient and thorough choice for conducting company due diligence is the process of using artificial intelligence (AI). AI uses machine learning tools to access and extract information from a vast variety of databases and documents — all analyzed and ready to use with high speed and accuracy. With an AI-driven corporate due diligence software, you automate the process of getting valuable company information, so you can focus on higher priority strategies.

What can an AI-driven due diligence software do?

Easily access all the corporate due diligence information you need with Thomson Reuters® CLEAR Adverse Media. CLEAR Adverse Media uses advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to:

• Access transparent data from millions of global sources with real-time updates
• Provide a relevancy scoring for each source 
• Highlight negative terms for quick scanning  
• Remove same or similar stories from the search results
• Provide full text documents with links to underlying sources
• Conduct large reviews with batch search capabilities and provide alerts for new information
• Enable teams to collaborate and analyze information in real time

Since corporate investigators need better tools to compile the most useful due diligence data available, it stands to reason they’d want a one-stop investigative platform powered by AI technology.

Along with a dashboard that supports multiple investigations, the tool’s API connection integrates data into your existing systems. It also includes built-in reporting capabilities that allow you to access and organize data in any number of ways.

Search engines may work as a backup for intelligent adverse media monitoring, but CLEAR Adverse Media provides a complete, one-stop solution that can uncover even the hardest-to-find information. At a time when comprehensive company due diligence is more important than ever, this powerful tool can help your organization avoid costly surprises, reduce financial risks, maintain strict compliance, and generate the results you need.