Sanctions screening used to be a chore with three weak points. Somebody had to load the lists by hand. A person added to a list after they signed up stayed unmatched until they next sent money. And a customer with a common or repeated name could produce hundreds of hits, each one cleared by hand. Over seven releases in September and October 2026, RemitSo removed all three. This guide is for compliance officers and MLROs who want to know what changed, what it means for their workload, and what still needs a person.
The principle: the platform keeps the lists current and checks everyone against them. Your compliance team still makes every ruling.
RemitSo, a white label remittance platform, screens every sender and recipient against eight sanction lists. Nothing is blocked automatically. Blocking a customer, holding transfers and reporting stay decisions a person takes.
Lists that load themselves, and prove they are genuine
Since release 2026.09.3, the sanction lists are published once as a versioned dataset and every installation loads them on its own each night. Since 2026.09.4 they are published every day and signed, and every installation checks the signature before it loads them.
- No manual loading. New listings no longer wait for someone to upload a file.
- Every screening records the list version it was measured against, so you can answer "what did the list say that day?"
- A delisted entry is marked, not deleted, so older screening reports still show what they matched.
- An unsigned or tampered list is refused, and the lists already loaded stay in use.
- Each list is watched on its own (2026.10.7). If one list stops updating, the alert names that list the day it falls behind, instead of it hiding behind the others.
In October the lists moved to a new signing key as planned maintenance, not because of any compromise. Installations needed to do nothing.
Everyone re-screened when the lists change
Screening only at sign-up and at payment leaves a gap. A customer who signs up today and is listed next month is not checked again until they move money. RemitSo closes that gap. After each nightly load, customers, recipients, account holders and staff are re-screened against what changed.
Two later fixes made this work on large books. Since 2026.10.5, re-screening finishes on large customer books and finds everyone screening would match. Since 2026.10.6, it no longer stalls on a very long listed name. The Sanction Lists page shows when re-screening is under way or has stopped.
Useful test: ask your current provider when a customer who signed up last month would next be checked if they were added to a list today. If the answer is "when they next send money", you have a gap.
Fewer false hits to clear by hand
| Situation | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| A name that repeats a word, or has only one word | Matched every listed name containing that word, sometimes hundreds at a time | Matched as a whole name (2026.10.3) |
| A partial match | Could match part of a word, so a short name matched longer names starting with it | Covers whole words only (2026.10.3) |
| A name with an initial | Matched every listed name sharing its one full word | No longer does (2026.10.6) |
| A hit already ruled "not this person" | Could come back | Stays ruled unless somebody revokes the ruling (2026.09.3) |
Screenings already recorded are not re-run automatically. If customers were flagged under the old matching, ask for a re-screen.
Rulings that record what really happened
- Confirm a match, not just dismiss it. Officers used to be able only to dismiss a hit, so nothing recorded that a genuine match had been found. Now a match can be confirmed as the listed person, with a reason, and confirming raises its own alert.
- Undo any ruling, with the change recorded.
- Read the list itself. The Sanction Entities page shows every name, date of birth, nationality, identification number and address a publisher gives for an entry, everyone on your platform who matched it, and the rulings made.
- A fast ledger. The screening ledger opens in well under a second, where it once took up to a minute on a busy installation.
Watch out: confirming a match does not block the customer or hold their transfers on its own. Write into your procedure who does that, and how quickly, once a match is confirmed.
Planning the first full screening
The first time an installation screens its whole book against the full lists, it produces a burst of possible matches: everyone whose name comes close to a listed one. On one large test book, that was about 4,100 matches in two hours. Decide before the first run who should receive those alerts, and plan the review time. After that, nightly runs only look at what changed.
Doing it with RemitSo
Sanctions screening is part of every RemitSo installation, alongside 46 ready-made risk indicators, AML rules by corridor and a plain-language audit log. See the admin features, read each change in the release notes, or book a demo to walk through the screening pages with us.
Frequently asked questions
How often are the sanction lists updated?
They are published every day, signed, and loaded by every installation each night after the signature is checked.
Who is re-screened when a list changes?
Customers, recipients, account holders and staff are all re-screened against what changed after each nightly load.
Does RemitSo block a customer automatically when there is a match?
No. It flags possible matches for your compliance team. Confirming a match, blocking a customer, holding transfers and reporting are decisions a person takes.
What happens if a list stops updating?
Each list is checked for freshness on its own, and the out-of-date alert names the list that is late.
Will the matching changes reduce our false positives?
For repeated and single-word names, partial word matches and names with initials, yes. Expect far fewer hits on those names to clear by hand.