UK Sanctions Screening
Screen any name against OFSI, UN, EU sanctions plus OpenSanctions PEP and adverse-media catalogues. One API call.
What it does
Programmatic sanctions, PEP and adverse-media screening combining the four UK-required public sanctions lists (OFSI, HMT Financial Sanctions Notices, the UN Security Council list, the EU consolidated list) with the OpenSanctions full PEP catalogue and OpenSanctions adverse-media collection. Returns fuzzy-matched candidates with a confidence score, the matching list, the OpenSanctions topic codes, and the raw entity record. Built for fintechs, lenders, accountancies, conveyancers and crypto exchanges who need same-day-as-publication coverage without paying enterprise compliance-suite prices.
Built for
- • Fintechs and challenger banks running per-transaction screening
- • Solicitors, conveyancers, accountancies meeting MLR 2017 obligations
- • Crypto exchanges screening wallet ownership claims
- • Lenders running sanctions checks during loan origination
- • Compliance teams at insurance brokers and corporate finance firms
Data sources
- • OFSI Consolidated Sanctions List(updates daily (machine-readable CSV, ~5MB))
- • HMT Financial Sanctions Notices(updates as published (small JSON feed))
- • UN Security Council Consolidated Sanctions List(updates as published (XML, ~3MB))
- • EU Consolidated Financial Sanctions List(updates daily (XML, ~10MB))
- • OpenSanctions PEP catalogue(updates live (Match API queries always read the current version))
- • OpenSanctions adverse-media collection(updates live)
How we compare
| Provider | Entry price | Where they fall short |
|---|---|---|
| ComplyAdvantage | £500+/month | Broader compliance suite; expensive for screening-only buyers |
| Refinitiv World-Check | enterprise (POA) | Slow integration, sales-led pricing, oversized for sub-enterprise |
| SmartSearch | £200+/month | Bundled with full KYC suite, overkill for screening-only buyers |
| Veriphy | ~£4 per check | Sanctions+PEP only, no adverse-media; quote-based at volume |
Reliability you can build on
Built on the same AWS infrastructure that runs UK banks and government services. Engineered for the kind of always-on availability your compliance workflow expects.
Target 99.9% uptime
Stack uptime is governed by AWS API Gateway (99.95%), Lambda (99.95%) and DynamoDB (99.99%) SLAs. We target 99.9% end-to-end, which works out at roughly 8 hours of downtime per year, worst case.
Hosted in London (eu-west-2)
Single-region UK hosting for low latency to UK customers and predictable data residency. Median response under 250ms; 5-minute response cache absorbs upstream blips.
Idempotent + cached
Repeat lookups within 5 minutes are served from cache, so transient FCA upstream issues don't propagate to you. Bulk endpoint runs with bounded concurrency to never overrun the source.
Contractual SLA on Pro
Pro plan includes a 99.9% uptime commitment, priority support with response in under 4 hours (UK business hours), and a private Slack channel for incident escalation.
Live status visibility lands with the public dashboard. Full incident history available to Pro customers on request.
Pricing
14-day free trial on all paid plans. Cancel any time.
- 1,000 screening checks / month
- OFSI / HMT / UN / EU sanctions lists
- OpenSanctions PEP + adverse-media catalogues
- Fuzzy name matching with confidence score
- 14-day free trial
- Email support
- 10,000 checks / month
- Bulk endpoint (up to 100 names per call)
- Webhook on new sanctions designation matching watchlist
- 30-day audit log of every check
- Email support (12h response)
- 100,000 checks / month
- 365-day audit log
- Priority support, response in under 4h (UK business hours)
- 99.9% uptime SLA
- Invoice billing
Why this pricing?
ComplyAdvantage and similar charge £500+/month for compliance suites that include sanctions screening. Standalone screening at low volume is underserved. Our minimum at £39/month sits below the threshold where a compliance-spending decision needs committee approval, an easy MD-level signoff at a small fintech or estate agent. We layer the same-day-fresh OpenSanctions PEP and adverse-media catalogues on top of OFSI/UN/EU at every tier (OpenSanctions Match API at €0.10/query is our upstream variable cost; we absorb it into the per-call price so the buyer doesn't see two billing surfaces). Per-check at £0.04 makes us cheaper than competitor per-check pricing for any volume above ~200 checks/month while including UK-specific list combination plus global PEP + adverse-media depth that competitor mid-tiers gate behind upgrades.
Use cases
How UK Sanctions Screening fits 3 concrete buyer workflows.
Letting agent · post-May-2025 sanctions rule
Sanctions screening for UK letting agents
Read the case →
Accountancy practice · MLR-2017 client onboarding
Sanctions screening for accountant client onboarding
Read the case →
Payment processor · merchant onboarding + monitoring
Sanctions screening for payment processors
Read the case →
Missing something?
Need a field we don't return, a regulator we don't cover, or a workflow our pricing tiers don't fit? Tell us. We're small enough to ship custom changes quickly: sometimes free, sometimes for a one-off fee, always with a fast yes/no on whether we can do it.