Vital information delivered in minutes, not weeks

Key results

• Thomson Reuters helps Northwest Bank complete 5 to 8 extremely comprehensive investigations per month as a three-person team
• Northwest Bank uses a Thomson Reuters product for every investigation
• Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions can pull a detailed report on a subject in as little as five minutes, down from several hours of manual web searching or even weeks to retrieve results from other vendors

Northwest Bank uses Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions to carry out enhanced due diligence work and investigations, using the tools to identify politically exposed persons, uncover any sanctions, and search public records for other information about individuals or companies whose financial transactions may have been suspicious. It introduced the tools to make its research and reporting more efficient and has achieved that goal. Reports now take as little as five minutes to compile, compared to spending several hours on web research and even weeks to receive the relevant information from other solution providers.

The risk management team conducts between five and eight investigations per month, using Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions to deliver a wide range of detailed information. Olga Gladkova, BSA Officer at Northwest Bank, is responsible for compliance with the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), which includes customer due diligence, suspicious activity determination and reporting, and risk tolerance reviews. In her experience in previous roles, without access to a centralized database to assist with research, investigations typically take significantly longer.

She says, “In the past, I’ve worked with vendors who would take weeks to locate information on a business entity and its beneficial owners or principals. I’ve also had to compile web research results as part of the investigation process to complete the review or supplement the information provided.

She continues, “Since our Bank’s customers, their owners and principals are primarily domestic, this helps us have the information at our fingertips. BSA investigations often may involve foreign counterparties, which can be time-consuming to research. Therefore, having a tool that streamlines the process for domestic customers, beneficial owners and executives is invaluable.”

The challenges Northwest Bank faced before using Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions

Before integrating Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions, Northwest Bank faced significant challenges in managing its risk and compliance operations. As a smaller institution with only 135 employees and a risk management team of just three individuals, the bank struggled with the efficiency and accuracy of its due diligence and investigative processes. The manual nature of the bank’s transaction reviews and customer investigations was particularly time consuming, often requiring extensive web searches and the laborious task of sifting through irrelevant or outdated information. This inefficiency not only consumed valuable time but also made it difficult to ensure the accuracy and comprehensiveness of their compliance efforts.

Moreover, the bank's existing methods lacked the ability to provide timely updates and alerts on their higher-risk customers. Without a streamlined system to monitor changes in public records or adverse media, the team found it challenging to stay current with potential risks associated with their customer base. This gap in their monitoring capabilities posed a significant risk, leaving the bank vulnerable to overlooking critical information that could impact its compliance and risk management strategies. The need for a more efficient, reliable, and comprehensive solution was evident, prompting Northwest Bank to seek out Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions to enhance operational effectiveness and ensure robust compliance.

Why Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions?

Northwest Bank opted for Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions over other vendors due to the comprehensive and efficient nature of the tools offered. The bank finds the Thomson Reuters Adverse Media solution beneficial when it comes to saving time searching for negative news on a subject. Gladkova says, “You're not left browsing pages upon pages upon pages on open-source search engines trying to determine if I have the right individual or am I getting a false positive?”

Another significant factor in choosing Thomson Reuters was the robust customer service and support. The bank's representatives found the Thomson Reuters team highly responsive and proactive, ensuring they promptly addressed any queries or issues. This level of support extended to personalized tutorials and assistance in understanding and utilizing the various features of the tools, such as the Alert Center and Global Beneficial Ownership insights. Gladkova says of her dedicated client manager, “She is always able to assist me with whatever I need.”

Multiple products all working together

Gladkova’s team uses a number of different products that work together to gather all of the necessary information needed when performing an investigation. CLEAR, the core solution around which every investigation is based, is a public records aggregator helping her and her team to gather important information and make connections to determine the legitimacy and risk associated with a potential new customer. 

She points out CLEAR's "risk indicators" and "quick analysis flags" features as particularly valuable. They help guide the risk management team’s research and understanding of which attributes to consider when managing risk appropriately or what to include in a report when looking at a particular entity. “The quick analysis flags are very helpful in guiding investigations, because you want to focus your attention on the riskiest customers. So, if Thomson Reuters doesn't see any concerns, given that it is pulling from such a large database and making sure that there is this constant data flow, with the most updated information, that gives me peace of mind,” explains Gladkova.

In addition to making information gathering faster, Gladkova and her team value the ability to set up customizable public records alerts that send updates on high-risk subjects directly to their inboxes at preferred intervals. They can monitor specific customers by uploading a list and receiving notifications about any changes, such as new addresses, phone numbers, judgments, or incarcerations. Importantly, the service is user-friendly and easy to navigate.

For an extra layer of protection, the team utilizes Thomson Reuters Adverse Media to identify any negative news tied to a person or business. Instead of throwing searches into multiple search engines and taking the time to review each one and figure out if it makes sense, Gladkova and her team can pull all that information together with a single search within the Adverse Media tool. She says, “We no longer have to go through the process of elimination to say, these particular articles are no longer relevant, so let's remove them. Luckily, Thomson Reuters does that for us.”

To complete their robust customer due diligence program (CDD), they have found the Global Beneficial Ownership add-on to be a helpful tool because of the ability to make connections between an individual and several businesses in different industries. Per Gladkova, “It is very interesting how everything can be affiliated through one report or one search. I’ve found that to be very beneficial.”

Powerful efficiency and accuracy results

The most significant benefit that Northwest Bank has seen from implementing Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions is the increase in efficiency and accuracy of their investigations.

One such way that efficiency improves is through the ability to pull in information from multiple sources with a single search. Gladkova says, “It is really nice to have access to all the data in one place. It is so easy to pull a report; it takes maybe five minutes. That really adds strength to our team, to be able to bounce through the different investigations pretty quickly.”

Another way that efficiency gains occur is through the ability to neatly summarize the information so the team can read and analyze it faster. “It’s also super helpful that the information you get from Thomson Reuters is not only true, it’s condensed. You see what’s most important. Thomson Reuters filters the information to provide us with exactly what we're looking for. Not only is it relevant, but it’s also all in one place and just really neatly summarized. It really helps us find the focus,” Gladkova says.

The improvement in accuracy Gladkova attributes primarily to the live gateways. She says,

When asked, Gladkova agreed that she relies on it as the most current information you can find.

While the up-to-date information makes investigations more effective, the efficiency gains free up more time for the risk management team to concentrate on other vital work, such as reviewing customer transactions to see if they align with the nature of the business and pinpoint when activities deviate from what they expect. This task is very time consuming and must be undertaken manually, so spending less time on due diligence and investigations is incredibly helpful.

“It would be hard to focus on complex transactional investigations and figure out what information to pull in our research if we didn't have Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions,” Gladkova says. “You just cannot afford to miss things. By utilizing the enhanced due diligence function as well as public records searches, the tools allow us to look at information in a complementary way.”

In one recent example, Gladkova was able to conduct an extremely in-depth review of a customer running a business in a particularly high-risk industry. Using Thomson Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions, she could quickly find all the associated addresses, business affiliations, and investments to create a very detailed write-up for her report.

When it came time to implement a new anti-money-laundering (AML) software, Northwest Bank partnered with Thomson Reuters to create even further efficiencies by integrating the solutions directly into their existing software. “Additionally, by integrating Thomsons Reuters Risk & Fraud Solutions into our new AML software, our research is conducted through the one system, further streamlining the investigations process.”