In an age of heightened financial scrutiny, RegTech is rapidly reshaping compliance norms. Yet, one of its most potent tools—adverse media screening—often flies under the radar. As regulators demand more, firms discover that in quiet lies a powerful compliance edge.
Adverse media screening often slips under the radar due to the fact companies still treat it as an optional add-on rather than essential, claims James Hannan – a risk specialist at Opoint.
He said, “Most compliance programmes prioritise clear-cut, objective sources, namely sanctions lists or Politically Exposed Persons. But those databases tell you who’s already flagged. Adverse media, on the other hand, gives you a heads-up on emerging risks before they become formal red flags.”
Hannan explained that as regulators increasingly urging firms to proactively identify potential threats, adverse media is no longer just a secondary data stream. “It is rapidly becoming an essential early warning system, making the difference between detecting risks early or responding too late to prevent financial and reputational damage,” he said.
How does smarter screening cut compliance costs quietly? The role of adverse media screening can be defined as a silent giant sitting within a company’s toolkit. Hannah explained that adverse media screening quietly and effectively reduces compliance costs by identifying risks at their earliest stages.
He remarked, “Rather than risking expensive investigations triggered by regulatory scrutiny or missed red flags, firms equipped with timely adverse media alerts can proactively tackle potential compliance breaches. Whether driven by automation or improved data access, adverse media creates a more holistic screening picture, reducing the risk of follow-up due diligence checks to uncover corroborating information.”
Despite its power, it has limited industry recognition. What limits this? For Hannan, the key limitation for the use of adverse media is that many institutions do not fully understand its potential.
“Compliance teams tend to underestimate adverse media due to its perceived complexity and subjective nature. Many still default to traditional, binary checks (like PEP and sanctions lists) because they seem straightforward—someone either appears on these lists or doesn’t,” he said.
Companies that fail to employ adverse media overlook a huge strategic advantage, which is the rich insights hidden in global, multilingual and local news sources, says Hannan.
He added, “Global media outlets often report risks long before they become mainstream news, and failing to leverage these sources leaves compliance teams blind to emerging threats and secondary risk factors, such as reputational damage.”
The Opoint risk specialist also stressed that adverse media screening directly builds trust between firms and regulators by clearly demonstrating a proactive compliance culture.
He explained, “Regulators trust organisations that actively seek out risks before they escalate into scandals. Robust adverse media practices offer regulators tangible evidence that your firm is genuinely committed to comprehensive and proactive compliance. However, more information is not always better, which is why the quality of the adverse media service and the ability to filter content based on a single entity or topic area are crucial in transforming vast amounts of media data into actionable insights for compliance professionals.”
Effective adverse media screening – especially when integrating structured, real-time data from global sources – signals transparency and vigilance.
Hannan concldued, “By systematically uncovering risks that traditional checks miss, firms demonstrate that they are not simply reacting to regulatory pressure, but are actively committed to managing risk and protecting their stakeholders. This proactive transparency goes a long way towards earning regulatory trust and confidence.”
Fly under the radar
Jon Elvin, a strategic risk advisor at Saifr, believes that adverse media in RegTech will often fly under the radar due to the fact it does not have an explicit line-item requirement.
He explained, “This is true for most financial institutions as well, particularly those in the US. While a few foreign operating locations do have some explicit requirements for adverse media for some categories of financial institutions, it is not widespread. However, it is more the norm that these types of adverse media and reputational insights do occur and surface with wide ranges of practice/technique when applying sound risk management for customer risk.”
Elvin stated that this also occurs in vendor procurement, third-and-fourth party exposures, global sanctions, general due diligence/KYC and fraud mitigation.
He went on, “While the words and label itself may not show up the reality is all firms or any type that have customers, partner alliances, counterparties or send and receive money likely deploy aspects of adverse media screening may not be formal, it sometimes shows up in simple internet searches and background checks.”
Smarter screening for Elvin is part science and part art. This comes down to its significant cost-cutting potential, whilst also balancing and considering tradeoffs in risk tolerance, budget, experience of practioner and regulatory standing/scrutiny.
He remarked, “A key driver is understanding the effort curve and truly assessing blind spots. Decisions on adverse media screening design, policy, coverage expectations and robustness of technical solution drives this. For several decades, many programs have accepted “less than ideal” coverage and frequency models from either concluding what could be a false sense of security, budget limitations, complacency or assessing/accepting legacy solutions that will only result in too many false positives.”
For Elvin, the truth is that tech advances can now deliver at-scale solutions with the precision applied for both depth and breadth of controlled-screening. “This can result in a confidence in coverage model, closing windows of vulnerability and ultimately higher degrees of effectiveness,” he said.
Elvin believes a key limiter of its ability to stand outcomes from the lack of true verifiable use cases and “apples to apples” comparisons trailed the hype of some early stage delivery. “Some of those early use stories merely dialed back a rule or coverage filter and while some false positive reductions were achieved, it more than likely increased risk vulnerability and pockets of hidden exposures not yet identified. This is now changing, but caution should still be on distinguishing marketing hype to actual technology capability.”
How can adverse media screening strengthen trust between firms and regulators? For Elvin, explainability, communication and fact-based verifiable proof points with real insights from an institutions customer and vendor portfolio is considered a leading way to strengthen the trust.
He said, “Running parallel controls side-by side for a period of time adds additional confidence in effectiveness. At the same time, firms must deploy a posture of responsible innovation and careful implementation as a gap or mistake in design or disparate outcome could lead to immediate moratorium on the changed control losing regulatory confidence and slowing down future innovation.”
An important step
According to Collete Smith, chief transformation officer at SmartSearch, adverse media screening is an important part of any AML check, and is one that has become increasingly complicated over time.
She said, “In recent years, the media and the way we consume it has changed dramatically. The number of media sources that today’s compliance teams must filter through is bigger than ever. Without a digital, automated screening strategy, the screening process is impossible to do comprehensively, which would require enormous time and resource investment.
“Secondly, regulations surrounding adverse media screening are not always clear. Despite mandating media screening in Customer Due Diligence (CDD) or Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) requirements, regulators often don’t specify how organisations should perform this screening, leading to inconsistent practices and degree of nervousness about ‘how it should be done’.”
The watchword for Smith in regard to the benefit of smarter screening is automation. “By leveraging smarter screening technologies, time-poor compliance teams can comprehensively filter far more media sources than would ever be possible manually.
“By incorporating category filters into the digital screening process, organisations can tailor and focus their screening capabilities according to specific risk categories, in accordance with their strategy and regulatory obligations. By filtering out the noise, greater time and resource savings are achieved,” said Smith.
The net result from this is twofold. “More effective screening and tangible efficiency gains that release compliance personnel to focus on other priorities, explained Smith.
The role of adverse media screening in strengthening trust between firms and regulators is a powerful one – and for Smith, firms that are able to demonstrate how technology is enabling better-than-manual media screening send a strong message to the regulator about their compliance capabilities. By taking this proactive approach, not only are they fortifying their own organisation against bad actors, they are also helping the regulators to update their watchlists.
She remarked, “In addition, every search, match, review and decision is logged and timestamped in an accessible, transferable, and easily auditable format. This gives both the firm and the regulator the confidence that only full transparency can provide.
“These two benefits help to strengthen a firm’s trust with its regulators, and may even help to reduce the likelihood of a compliance auditor knocking on the door.”
Silent strength
In the view of Baran Ozkan, CEO at Flagright, adverse media screening doesn’t get the hype. However, it should – as he believes its one of the most underrated tools in modern compliance.
Why does it fly under the radar? For Ozkan, its not flashy like AI fraud detection and often, most teams see it as a checklist item – not a value-add. “But when its done right, it’s a silent workhorse. It flags hidden reputational risks early, strengthens risk scoring without extra cost and it builds trust with regulators by going beyond minimum KYC.”
He concluded,” Smart screening, especially with NLP-driven tools cuts down noise, saves time, and improves risk profiles. At Flagright, we see it as a strategic lever, not just another compliance box to tick.”
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