SANCTIONS SCREENING
Sanctions screening for small businesses
If you have to run a sanctions check but cannot justify a per-seat screening vendor, run it in the browser. Your customer list stays on your device.
No account. Nothing you type is uploaded. The first visit downloads the matcher and the signed list (up to about 80 MB); repeat visits reuse the cached copy.
Who this is for
Small accounting practices, company-formation agents, payment and fintech teams, importers and exporters, law firms and anyone else who has to run a sanctions check but cannot justify a per-seat screening contract. If your "screening process" is a government website, a spreadsheet and a note in a file, this is built for you.
Why the usual options are a bad fit
Vendors charge per seat or per check
Enterprise screening is priced for banks. For a five-person practice, the procurement and the annual contract cost more than the risk it is meant to manage.
Vendors receive your customer list
Uploading names, dates of birth and passport details to a third party creates a data-processing relationship, a transfer question and a breach surface you did not have before.
Manual checks do not scale
Searching four government sites by hand, one name at a time, produces inconsistent records and no explanation of why a name was cleared.
What a small screening control actually needs
- The right lists — at minimum the jurisdictions you touch: US OFAC, EU, UN and UK consolidated lists.
- Name-aware matching — transliteration, aliases, word order and spelling variation, not an exact string search.
- An explanation — which list, which alias, which signals, and a score a reviewer can defend.
- A record — who was screened, against which list version, and what the reviewer decided.
- A repeatable process — re-screen when the list changes, not only at onboarding.
AML-Filter covers the first three in the browser and gives you a local KYC workstation for the fourth. The fifth is a process decision: the app shows the list version, so you can record what was screened and when.
How the workflow fits together
Screen
Type a name, optionally a date of birth. Pick a strictness preset. The app returns scored, explained matches from the signed lists.
Review
Promote a potential match into the local review board, record a decision, and keep the reasoning with the case instead of in an email thread.
Keep it local
Customer records, matches and decisions live in SQLite in your browser's private storage (OPFS). There is no server and no account.
The trade-off is real. Local-first means no central audit log and no cross-device sync. If your regulator requires centrally retained records, export or document the local record according to your own policy, or use a vendor that provides that service.
Questions
Is this enough for KYC/AML compliance?
It can be part of your process, not the whole of it. Screening is one control; you still need customer due diligence, risk assessment, record-keeping, reporting and a named responsible person. Ask your regulator or compliance adviser what your specific obligations are.
What does it cost to run?
The software is free and there is no backend to operate. The real costs are the first-visit download (up to about 80 MB per device) and the human time to review matches.
Can several people in my firm use it?
Each person runs it in their own browser; there is no shared server or account system. That is the privacy property, and also the limit: records do not sync between devices.
Which lists are included?
US OFAC SDN, EU, UN and UK consolidated lists, shipped as a signed bundle. See list coverage for the caveats.