Sanctions screening, defined, and explicitly not something Solidus does

Solidus ships no sanctions screening, no PEP screening and no adverse-media screening. All three are not-built in our lexicon. This page exists to define the vocabulary precisely, it must never be read as a capability, and if any Solidus material implies we screen, that material is wrong.

What it is

Checking a person or entity against lists of parties subject to sanctions, and against related categories: politically exposed persons, and adverse media.

Three things make it harder than a lookup:

• Name matching is fuzzy. Transliteration, aliases, spelling variants and common names mean matching is probabilistic, which is why the false-positive rate is a real operational metric rather than an afterthought.
• The lists change. Screening is not a one-time act; existing customers must be re-screened as designations change.
• A hit is the start of work, not the end. Someone has to adjudicate whether the match is the same person, and record why they concluded what they did.

Why identity verification is a different problem

Verification answers is this person who they claim to be? Screening answers is this person, once identified, someone we are prohibited or required to treat differently?

Those are sequential, not substitutable. Verifying an identity to a very high assurance level tells you nothing about whether that identity appears on a list. A credential we issue is silent on the question, and it would be actively harmful to imply otherwise, screening failures carry regulatory consequences that a marketing overstatement would not survive.

This is somebody else's product category, and a serious one. If you are evaluating screening, evaluate screening vendors.

Where identity infrastructure sits relative to this

Adjacent and upstream. Screening needs a reliable identity to screen against: a match resolved against a poorly verified identity is worth less than one resolved against a well-verified identity. That is a real but modest contribution, and it is the entire honest claim: we can help you be sure who you are screening. We cannot screen them.