Sanctions Data Error

In updates published yesterday by U.S. Department of the Treasury's OFAC, our sanctions processing system picked up multiple errors while processing the official SDN file, as highlighted below. 

BigTXN maintains a direct line of communication with regulatory authorities and sanctions agencies, whose official files we process. We have notified OFAC and expect the error to be corrected. 

Errors of this nature can be quite disruptive to matching and processing of sanctioned securities data. Our processes isolate these cases early, to remedy them before any false positives or false negatives are generated.

False positives refer to instances where a transaction or activity is flagged as potentially violating sanctions when it is actually legitimate. False negatives, on the other hand, refer to instances where a transaction or activity is not flagged as potentially violating sanctions when it actually is.

Both these cases can have negative consequences for sanctioned securities data. False positives can result in legitimate trades being blocked or delayed, which can have significant financial and reputational costs for the parties involved. False negatives, on the other hand, can allow sanctioned securities to be processed through trading,  market-making, clearing or settlement activities which can undermine effectiveness of sanctions and result in penalties.

It is important to minimize both of these cases to ensure that legitimate transactions are not unnecessarily disrupted while also preventing securities connected to sanctioned individuals or entities from being traded.

BigTXN operates robust data quality processes, as well as ongoing monitoring and refinement of these processes to ensure that they remain effective over time.

Discover our Global Sanctions Monitoring data solution.