What Is Name Screening?

Name screening comes up when you open an account with a bank or payment provider, and every time money moves to a new party. The question is always the same: does this name appear on a list that forbids or restricts doing business with them?

What is name screening?

Name screening compares the names of customers, their owners and their counterparties with official lists. Sanctions lists mean a legal ban. PEP lists mean extra checks: FATF Recommendation 12 asks for senior management approval, "reasonable measures to establish the source of wealth and source of funds" and "enhanced ongoing monitoring", not a refusal.8FATF, The FATF Recommendations (updated October 2025), Recommendation 12, copy hosted by Hong Kong Customs and Excise (read October 14, 2026) Many teams also add adverse media screening and their own internal block lists.

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How name matching works

An exact match only catches identical spelling. Real names come with aliases, typos and several ways to write the same name in Latin letters, so screening engines add fuzzy matching. OFAC documents the logic of its own Sanctions List Search tool: a score of 100 means an exact match, and lower scores come from two algorithms, Jaro-Winkler for character similarity and Soundex for sound. OFAC "cannot make" a threshold recommendation: each business sets its own based on its risk assessment.3OFAC, FAQs 246 to 250, How to Search OFAC's Sanctions Lists (read October 14, 2026)

The cost of fuzzy matching is noise. OFAC says plainly that "many potential matches identified through screening are false positives". To clear one, compare the rest of the listing with what you know: date of birth, ID numbers, nationality, address. OFAC's enhanced list data also carries names in non-Latin scripts, which helps with transliteration. If only a first or last name matches, the hit is probably not valid. OFAC does not confirm matches for you.1OFAC, FAQ 5, When screening for sanctions, how do I determine if I have a valid match (updated September 9, 2026, read October 14, 2026)

When to screen, and what happens on a match

Screening runs at onboarding as part of know your customer and underwriting, again through ongoing monitoring as lists change, and at payment time, for example before a disbursement. For euro instant transfers, EU law replaced per-transfer checks with daily screening of a bank's own customers: see SEPA Instant.

On a valid OFAC match, OFAC's steps are to check for a license or exemption, then block the property (freeze it in a blocked account) or reject the transaction when no blocked person is involved.1OFAC, FAQ 5, When screening for sanctions, how do I determine if I have a valid match (updated September 9, 2026, read October 14, 2026) Then comes reporting. Blocking reports "shall be filed within 10 business days from the date that property becomes blocked", plus an annual report by September 30 on everything still blocked on June 30.931 CFR 501.603, Reports of blocked, unblocked, or transferred blocked property (eCFR, up to date as of October 9, 2026) Rejected transactions are reported "within 10 business days of the rejected transaction".1031 CFR 501.604, Reports of rejected transactions (eCFR, up to date as of October 9, 2026)