Intelligent onboarding & risk management: The Thomson Reuters CLEAR advantage

Thomson Reuters CLEAR investigative software stands at the forefront of identity verification and risk management, empowering financial institutions and law enforcement agencies to verify customer identities, prevent fraud, and investigate complex crimes. Yet, its impact extends far beyond these traditional domains, as organizations across various industries use it for other purposes as well.

Hundreds of companies across diverse industries apply CLEAR to streamline their due diligence processes when onboarding new vendors, merchants, service providers, business associates, and other professional partners. It helps strengthen and improve their daily risk-management practices, ensure supply-chain integrity, comply with anti-money-laundering (AML) regulations, and monitor the internet for any relevant adverse media events. 

More fraud, higher risks

The landscape of risk management has changed dramatically over the past several years. Fraud, deception, and corruption are so widespread that companies cannot be too careful about the organizations and individuals with whom they choose to do business. Furthermore, failure to comply with financial and trade regulations can result in expensive penalties and reputational damage. 

Outcomes like these are preventable. Companies that integrate CLEAR into their onboarding and risk-management workflows experience extra layers of security while also streamlining their operations and building customer trust. This software can provide the clarity and confidence that companies need to protect themselves and reassure stakeholders that their operations reflect the highest legal and ethical standards. 

Accurate, efficient onboarding

Companies use CLEAR during onboarding to check and verify information about businesses or individuals they may work with. They often need to confirm basic details, like names, addresses, ownership, and licenses, to make sure the information is accurate. Businesses also use it to ensure that potential partners are not involved in illegal or unethical activities that could harm the company’s reputation or its relationships with other suppliers and customers.

For example, retailers use CLEAR to ensure that their suppliers are reputable businesses and that any regulatory violations or other legal issues do not compromise their supply chain. Some retailers also use it to detect synthetic identities, identify fake customer accounts, prevent account takeovers, and protect their operations from various methods of fraud.

Improved supply-chain protection

Manufacturers use CLEAR to protect their supply chains and verify the legitimacy of new suppliers. Business filings, ownership structure, litigation history, sanctions, negative news — all this information and more can be reviewed during standard know-your-vendor (KYV) checks to determine whether a supplier meets established standards for responsible business practices. 

Companies in other industries — such as healthcare, technology, software, insurance, casino gaming, and hospitality — use CLEAR for similar reasons. What these organizations all have in common is the need to avoid inadvertently engaging in business activities that could threaten or damage their operations, reputation, or finances. 

Industry case study: Healthcare

Several large healthcare networks in the United States actively use CLEAR to screen potential new vendors, ensuring all their suppliers are reputable and reliable businesses. Healthcare organizations also rely on it to screen service providers within the healthcare system’s extended network.

In many healthcare organizations, third-party suppliers deliver a wide range of services, including claims processing, patient scheduling, and IT support. To contain costs and improve operational efficiency, many hospitals also outsource services such as food and laundry, lab testing, diagnostics, pharmacy management, telehealth, and other essential functions.

Healthcare administrators who use CLEAR typically conduct due diligence to screen these providers. They verify business identity with the CLEAR ID Confirm module and use CLEAR’s Adverse Media with Sanctions screening tool to assess risk.

These searches confirm whether the potential service provider holds proper licenses and remains in good standing. They reveal and flag any bankruptcies, liens, judgments, or court proceedings in the provider’s history. The system also notes and tags any negative or compromising media coverage with a numerical risk score.

To speed up the vetting process, users can run a Risk Analysis Summary (RAS) report. This is a brief, AI-generated verbal summary of the risk factors revealed during the search, along with a short assessment of the severity of any risks identified. If certain risk factors exceed predetermined thresholds, the RAS provides links to the source material for further investigation. If no risk factors turn up, the RAS will say so in a concise summary of the search’s final results. 

Industry case study: Manufacturing

Large manufacturers use CLEAR for similar reasons, but they often manage a vast, global network of suppliers.

When companies trade internationally, they focus on two main goals: protecting the integrity, quality, and reliability of their supply chain, and ensuring their supply chain does not involve forced labor or materials from sanctioned countries or individuals.

To meet federal regulations and secure strong assurances, large manufacturers and multinational companies often go beyond checking their Tier 1 vendors. They also review the business histories of their Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers, as well as the companies that provide resources and materials to those suppliers.

Obtaining such detailed information can be challenging because suppliers in other parts of the world often do not respond to disclosure requests, even when these requests come from the parent company that ultimately pays them. While a CLEAR search may not uncover every violation in a complex supply chain, it does aggregate relevant information from premium data sources. If it finds any anomalies or discrepancies, it alerts users and provides clues that can help them make a more concrete assessment of the situation.

Industry case study: Retail and service

Retailers, property managers, and service providers leverage CLEAR to vet individuals and businesses entering their ecosystem to ensure that they are legitimate and trustworthy. When merchants sell goods or accept payments on behalf of a larger organization, protecting the payment system's integrity is crucial to maintaining public trust. 

As with other businesses and industries, those in the retail and service sectors can use CLEAR ID Confirm to verify the legitimacy of merchants entering their network. They can uncover any negative news coverage and inclusion on sanctions lists with CLEAR Adverse Media with Sanctions, and CLEAR Risk Inform helps them conduct deeper due diligence and quickly assess fraud risk. 

Automated monitoring

To maintain the integrity of these networks over time, businesses actively monitor merchant performance, ensuring compliance with company policies. CLEAR's automated functions enable 24/7 oversight, issuing alerts when data points fall outside customized risk criteria.

Other use cases

CLEAR helps other types of businesses as well:

• Casinos and other betting establishments — for example, racetracks, off-track betting facilities (OTBs), and sportsbooks — use it to make sure high-value customers are not involved in criminal activity or linked to any sanctioned individuals or countries. They also use it in such establishments to comply with federal AML regulations. 
• Companies involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) negotiations use it to gather intelligence about deals they are considering. The information collected includes owner identity verification, litigation and transaction histories, stakeholder affiliations, regulatory concerns, negative media coverage, and any other hidden risks that the business should take into consideration before committing to a deal. 
• Insurance companies use it in several ways, including fraud detection, identity verification, and the investigation of fraudulent claims. It is especially helpful for so-called “skip tracing” to locate individuals or assets — like motor vehicles — that cannot be found by any other means. Due to data privacy laws, however, CLEAR cannot be used to determine a person’s eligibility for insurance.

CLEAR: A versatile, flexible solution

Regardless of the industry, however, companies primarily rely on CLEAR to:

• Strengthen risk management practices
• Verify identities and basic business information
• Automate threat assessments and 24/7 monitoring
• Streamline third-party due diligence
• Identify and prevent fraud
• Ensure regulatory compliance
• Protect supply-chain integrity
• Investigate suspicious activity and malfeasance

CLEAR can serve all these functions because it isn’t just a single software product; rather, it’s a flexible tool with multiple modules that users can configure and customize to fit their individual needs and preferences. Offered as standalone modules or packaged together, its versatility allows companies to tailor their usage to fit comfortably into any risk management or compliance program. 

CLEAR’s separate modules

CLEAR ID Confirm

Companies use this tool primarily to confirm the identities of businesses and individuals during onboarding and to conduct vendor and merchant due diligence.

CLEAR Risk Inform

This risk assessment tool quickly identifies risk factors, assigns risk scores, and monitors all types of criminal activity. Companies also use it for onboarding and due diligence. 

CLEAR Adverse Media with Sanctions

This is a robust media assessment and monitoring tool that scans 20 million media sources in 120 countries in real time. Media searches also cross-reference information with more than 900 sanctions lists, as well as lists for politically exposed persons (PEPs) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that may be involved in criminal activities such as bribery, corruption, and money laundering. 

Other advantages: API integration, scalability, and efficiency

In addition to its core functions, CLEAR also offers several other benefits. 

For example, adding it to an existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is easy because it integrates with client systems using a platform-agnostic API architecture. Connected through the API, users have instant access to continuously updated public and proprietary records data and can customize search parameters however they want. 

Besides smooth integration, API connectors enable automation of routine scans and 24/7 monitoring of public databases and media sources. The API architecture is also infinitely scalable, which makes it ideal for companies that process a high volume of transactions through complex, multidimensional supplier networks.

In these and many other ways, CLEAR helps companies improve the efficiency of their risk-management practices, save money, and enhance security. Indeed, more than 80% of surveyed users say it allows them to do their screening work roughly twice as fast as before. Users also report that the average time it takes customers to experience a return on investment with CLEAR is between six months and one year, depending on the modules and configuration.