Best Adverse Media Screening Software: 6 Vendors Compared

If you’ve found this article, the chances are you’re looking for:

• Adverse media screening software to reduce your reliance on manual processes when onboarding and monitoring customers. .
• A way to quickly compare the top available solutions.
• A straightforward list of features and use cases. 

This article summarizes seven adverse media screening software vendors, listing their key strengths and features.

Top Adverse Media Screening Software Companies

1. ComplyAdvantage

Adverse Media Screening from ComplyAdvantage is a natural language processing (NLP)-based solution to help firms analyze AML/CFT risk through negative news at scale. It fulfills all recommendations given by The Wolfsberg Group for negative news screening solutions and enables continuous monitoring, dramatically reducing backlog. It’s based on four central capabilities:

• Structured screening: Instead of screening against an infinite stream of articles, it screens against structured, continuously updated entity and individual profiles. 
• Curated source lists: Financial crime experts collate specific source lists based on the reality of how criminals operate. 
• Contextual machine learning: The solution filters out non-adverse media hits with machine learning that’s trained on the specific context of adverse media. 
• FATF Taxonomy: It leverages an anti-money laundering and combatting the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) taxonomy that’s aligned with the regulations and guidance laid out by the FATF. 

Top ComplyAdvantage features:

Adverse Media Screening from ComplyAdvantage is ideally suited to a range of organizations, including banks, insurance companies, and payment providers who need to shorten customer wait times, improve analyst productivity, and proactively manage compliance. 

The solution’s most important features include:

• Live profiles – Use live, structured profiles consisting of rich, dynamic information from millions of data points to reduce onboarding times by as much as 80 percent. 
• Streamlined workflows – Focus on the alerts that matter most with automation for labor-intensive processes and custom risk profiles that are quick and easy to create.
• Automated KYC updates – Meet even advanced due diligence requirements with automated updates for continuous know your customer (KYC) without manual rescreening. 
• Tailored alerts – Customize your program based on the risks that are most relevant to your business and select source lists based on recommendations from the FATF and EU money laundering directives (MLDs).
• Hassle-free API integration – Integrate the feeds, systems of record, and applications you rely on into a single search function.
• Natural language processing (NLP) – Use a contextual approach to filter out non-adverse media hits. 

ComplyAdvantage’s Adverse Media Screening customers include Allianz, Currencycloud, Holvi, raisin, and Luno. 

2. Quantifind

As per Crunchbase, Quantifind provides “AI solutions for anti-money laundering and fraud detection”. 

The top Quantifind features for adverse media screening include (1): 

• AI-driven continuous monitoring – Use AI to curate public data sources and receive push notifications when new signals emerge.
• Dynamic risk rating – Target specific concerns with granular risk typologies such as extortion, child exploitation, and elder abuse.
• Programmatic search – Anonymously and automatically search a massive array of public data sources.
• API integration – Get summarized results through API’s and a web-based investigation application.
• Native foreign language search – Use non-roman characters to boost the accuracy and quantity of available data. 

According to Quantifind, its customers include Financial Systems Polaris, Oracle FCCM, and Varo.

3. Quantexa

Crunchbase describes Quantexa as a “decision intelligence platform for the banking, insurance, and government sectors.”

Quantexa’s top features include (2): 

• Intelligence-led investigations – Automate first-line (L1) investigations and augment second-line (L2), third-line (L3), and financial intelligence unit (FIU) investigations with an integrated investigation platform. 
• Dynamic, real-time connections – Identify threats like money laundering and terrorist financing rapidly by surfacing connections.
• Continuous risk monitoring – Detect risks in real-time with end-to-end monitoring and alert management for investigations.
• Data governance – Manage and ingest data in a way that increases transparency and control across fincrime use cases.
• Transparent statistical models – Make it easier to explain to stakeholders how data is joined together and used for decision-making.

According to Quantexa (3), its customers include ABN Amro, Accenture, and Bronte Capital.

4. Dow Jones Risk and Compliance

According to G2, Dow Jones Risk and Compliance is “a global provider of third-party risk management and regulatory compliance solutions”. 

Its top features include (3): 

• Real-time, continuous monitoring – Get real-time alerts that present a holistic view of client risk.
• Identity resolution – Reduce false positives with identities resolved across languages using NLP technology that matches biographical details in client records.
• Continuously improving classification – Supervised machine learning classifies news articles into risk categories to reduce the burden of processing each alert.
• Open architecture – Use multiple APIs to integrate into your existing systems for both onboarding and continuous monitoring.
• Customizability – Reduce manual effort with configurable search precision, ad-hoc screening, batch processing, and real-time screening through configurable workflows.

Dow Jones Risk and Compliance does not list its customers publicly. 

5. LexisNexis Risk Solutions

According to Crunchbase, LexisNexis Risk Solutions “provides information to assist customers in industry and government in assessing, predicting and managing risk”. 

LexisNexis’ adverse media screening capabilities are packaged within its Bridger Insight XG solution. Its top benefits include (5):

• Faster screening and account opening – Reduce onboarding times and screen transactions with fewer manual reviews.
• Customer lifecycle management – Orchestrate relationships across a single, configurable, and accessible platform for financial crime lifecycle management.
• A single risk view – Combine global risk data spanning global sanctions, politically exposed persons (PEPs), adverse media, and state-owned companies.

LexisNexis’ customers include Zopa, Advantage Finance Limited, and Cashhome. 

6. LSEG Data & Analytics (Previously Refinitiv) 

According to Crunchbase, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is a “provider of financial markets data and infrastructure”. 

LSEG’s adverse media tool’s top features include (6) (7):

• A highly structured format – Identify entities and individuals reported in reputable media as being involved in specific offenses monitored by World-Check.
• One Media Check – A highly customizable screening tool that uses intelligent tagging and NLP to efficiently return relevant search results. 
• Pursue your own policies – Screen against the records that fit your own policies, procedures, and risk-based approach by filtering secondary identifiers, keywords, and more.
• Special Interest Categories – Select topics of interest for a more granular view of potential risks associated with both the pre- and post-conviction records included in the World-Check database.

LSEG’s customers include Union Bank and Sansan.

Best Adverse Media Screening SoftwareVendors: Side-by-Side Comparison

All information sourced from publicly available websites, and correct as of November 2023. If you’d like to request a correction, please e-mail [email protected] and we’d be happy to review this with you. 

Next Steps: Explore Adverse Media Screening from ComplyAdvantage

Discover why businesses around the world choose ComplyAdvantage for adverse media screening, and book a demo to see the solution for yourself. 

Source material

(1) https://www.quantifind.com/use-case-adverse-media-screening/

(2) https://www.quantexa.com/solutions/aml 

(3) https://www.quantexa.com/featured-customers/

(4) https://www.dowjones.com/professional/risk/advanced-screening-monitoring/

(5) https://risk.lexisnexis.co.uk/products/bridger-insight-xg

(6) https://www.refinitiv.com/en/risk-and-compliance/financial-crime-risk-management/adverse-media-screening

(7) https://www.refinitiv.com/en/about-us/customer-stories#t-sansan

(8) https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/quantifind-announces-strategic-partnership-with-opoint-unlocking-unparalleled-global-news-data-301866886.html

(9) https://www.quantexa.com/partner-ecosystem/