Vendor, customer, and employee compliance management are essential for organizations to maintain adherence to compliance standards, mitigate risk, and uphold their reputation. However, as contract volume grows, it can be difficult for organizations to track the records of vendors, customers, partners, and employees regularly. To achieve and maintain compliance, it is paramount that organizations, regardless of industry, remain aware of violations committed by entities they are performing business with. Such violations include failure to adhere to economic and trade sanctions under The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Contract management software with intelligent national sanction compliance checks and risk analysis snapshots can help organizations avoid these issues by providing a comprehensive and centralized OFAC search process. This solution is CobbleStone Software
The Importance of OFAC Search
OFAC is a government financial intelligence and sanction enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It enforces economic sanctions and trade measures based on established national security goals and U.S. foreign policies against targeted individuals and organizations. These entities are on OFAC's national sanctions lists and include those associated with foreign states, terrorists, those involved with WMD, those in enemy geographic locations, and others on the SDN (specially designated nationals) list.
OFAC has the authority to set substantial penalties against individuals and organizations that defy its mandates, including levying fines, suspending assets, and prohibiting parties from operating in the United States. As such, organizations must ensure that they are taking adequate measures to avoid business associations with flagged entities. OFAC provides a website to identify flagged entities and employees, but the process may require time-intensive, manual data entry and review.
Save Time with OFAC Search Automation
Organizations can make sure that they are equipped with an intelligent OFAC search process for regulatory compliance management and risk prevention with the help of an advanced contract management software solution with OFAC integration - such as CobbleStone Contract Insight®.
CobbleStone Contract Insight system administrators can run scheduled, detailed OFAC searches and incorporate these searches with contract, request, vendor, customer, employee, and purchase order records for centralized vendor, company, and employee risk analysis.
With CobbleStone Contract Insight’s intelligent data aggregation service, CobbleStone Software administrators can:
- establish which available areas within their software system they want to be checked against the OFAC database.
- define whether they want to include checks for Also Known As (AKA) records that search for potential aliases or other names for vendors and customers within OFAC’s lists.
- determine what is flagged as a “match” between vendor/customer and employee data and OFAC data based on a chosen percentage (for example, a match is set as a similarity percentage of 70 percent or more).
On top of an initial OFAC database check, CobbleStone Contract Insight also offers ongoing scheduled searches for chosen vendor, customer, and employee records. As a result, organizations can stay aware of national compliance status with consistent compliance audits!
Additionally, you can enjoy OFAC scores at a glance at the top of system record pages. You can view the percentage of matched data between CobbleStone Contract Insight and the OFAC database. The lower and greener, the better! You want that OFAC score to be zero.
If the vendor does get flagged as having a higher-than-zero OFAC score with matches, you can view those matches to learn more.
In the example below, my team in the United States spots that a vendor has a high maximum confidence score of 83. When we view the matches to learn more, we discover that this vendor is associated with foreign states and enemy geographic locations to the United States.
(NOTE: This image is for OFAC search functionality demonstrational purposes only. The OFAC search result shown in this image does not represent CobbleStone's relationship with the entities pictured.)
There is also a link on system record pages that presents CobbleStone Contract Insight users with a visually engaging graph that displays the percentage of matched data between CobbleStone Contract Insight and the OFAC database. Clicking on this system link shows a more detailed view of matching details.
Get Started with Better OFAC Search
The best way to prevent OFAC compliance issues, increased risk, and a damaged organizational reputation is with the implementation of a centralized, comprehensive system for identifying and avoiding business association with OFAC-sanctioned entities. CobbleStone Software has you covered with a highly configurable OFAC search process that offers scheduled OFAC compliance checks and detailed OFAC compliance reports.
Leverage CobbleStone Contract Insight OFAC integration for improved visibility of customer, vendor, partner, and employee compliance data and risk analysis today!
Ready to experience the full strength of CobbleStone Software's award-winning features? Book a risk-free, free demo today!
Please note that Contract Insight’s OFAC integration is an optional add-on module licensed by CobbleStone. Please contact your CobbleStone Account Representative for a demo and pricing.
*Legal Disclaimer: This article is not legal advice. The content of this article is for general informational and educational purposes only. The information on this website may not present the most up-to-date legal information. Readers should contact their attorney for legal advice regarding any particular legal matter.
* This article was originally published on May 22, 2020 and updated on May 22, 2024.
