Skip to content

Adverse Media Screening

Definition

Adverse media screening (also called negative news screening) is the process of searching news sources, public records, and other media for negative information about customers that may indicate involvement in financial crime, fraud, corruption, or other activities that increase risk.

What Adverse Media Includes

Category Examples
Financial crime Money laundering charges, fraud convictions, embezzlement
Corruption Bribery allegations, government corruption involvement
Terrorism Links to terrorist organizations or financing
Organized crime Association with criminal organizations
Sanctions evasion Attempts to circumvent sanctions
Tax evasion Tax fraud charges or investigations
Regulatory action Fines, license revocations, enforcement actions
Cybercrime Hacking, data theft, ransomware
Environmental crime Illegal dumping, pollution violations
Human rights Trafficking, forced labor associations

How Adverse Media Screening Works

graph TD
    A[Customer Name + Details] --> B[Search Engine]

    B --> C[News databases<br/>LexisNexis, Factiva]
    B --> D[Web search<br/>Google News, Bing]
    B --> E[Court records<br/>Legal databases]
    B --> F[Regulatory filings<br/>SEC, FCA, SEBI]
    B --> G[Social media<br/>where applicable]

    C & D & E & F & G --> H[NLP Processing]
    H --> H1[Entity resolution - is this about our customer?]
    H --> H2[Sentiment analysis - is this negative?]
    H --> H3[Category classification - what type of adverse info?]
    H --> H4[Severity scoring - how serious?]

    H1 & H2 & H3 & H4 --> I{Adverse Hit?}
    I -->|No relevant adverse media| J[Clear]
    I -->|Adverse media found| K[Risk escalation]

    K --> L[Analyst review]
    L --> M[Risk reassessment]
    M --> N[Apply EDD if warranted]

    style K fill:#F57F17,color:#000
    style J fill:#2E7D32,color:#fff

Adverse Media Providers

Provider Approach Key Feature
Dow Jones Curated by journalists Highest quality, structured data
Refinitiv World-Check Curated + automated Broad coverage
ComplyAdvantage AI-powered, real-time Lowest false positive rate
LexisNexis Extensive news archives Deep historical coverage
ACAMS / Kharon Specialized compliance data Targeted for compliance teams

Key Takeaways

Summary

  • Adverse media screening detects negative news that PEP and sanctions lists may not capture
  • NLP and AI are essential — processing millions of news articles to find relevant hits
  • Entity resolution is the biggest challenge — confirming the news article is about YOUR customer
  • FATF recommends adverse media as part of CDD and risk assessment
  • Screening should happen at onboarding and on an ongoing basis
  • Adverse media findings may trigger risk reassessment and upgrade to EDD