Letting agent · post-May-2025 sanctions rule
Sanctions screening for UK letting agents
The problem
May 2025 brought every UK letting agent into the regulated-screening regime. Sanctions checks on tenant + landlord on every let, audit trail kept for 7 years. SmartSearch and Veriphy charge £3-5 per check; a 200-let-per-month branch is looking at £600-1k a month and reconciling six different PDFs into one client file.
How Stratum fits
The sanctions-screening endpoint returns OFSI, UN, EU consolidated lists + the OpenSanctions PEP catalogue + adverse-media in one response. Sub-300ms p95. List-version timestamps in every response so the audit trail is clean. Pair with the letting-agent suite endpoint for property + corporate-landlord PSC walks in one transaction. Per-check pricing matches Veriphy; volume bands undercut SmartSearch.
One request
# Request
curl "https://api.stratumapis.com/v1/sanctions/screen?name=Vladimir+Putin" -H "x-stratum-key: $KEY"
# Response
{ "matches": [{"list": "ofsi", "name": "PUTIN, Vladimir", "score": 0.97, "sanctionRegime": "UK Russia Sanctions Regime"}], "pepMatches": [...], "adverseMediaMatches": [...], "listVersions": {...} }Set $KEY from your dashboard.
Frequently asked
Does this meet the May 2025 LSAG-2025 rule?
Yes. We screen against OFSI / UN / EU + PEP + adverse media — the four sources LSAG-2025 names. The audit-cert PDF (bundled in the suite endpoint) is hash-verifiable for HMRC inspection.
How do you handle name variants (translations, aliases)?
The matcher normalises Cyrillic-Roman, German umlauts, Arabic transliteration variants. We pin behaviour with spot-check tests against known cases (Erdoğan/Erdogan, Gaddafi/Qaddafi).
How do you compare to SmartSearch / Veriphy?
Same data depth; per-check pricing matches Veriphy; volume bands undercut SmartSearch. The letting-agent suite endpoint also bundles property + PSC for corporate landlords in one transaction at £4.95/check.