Questions to consider when choosing how to integrate OpenSanctions into a screening process.
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Questions to consider when choosing how to integrate OpenSanctions into a screening process.
Every screening process has different data, regulatory, and technical requirements. Answering the questions below will help you choose between the Screening API, an in-house screening license, and a reseller or OEM license.
You do not need a finished technical design before talking to us. A rough understanding of your requirements is enough to make the conversation useful.
Start with the sanctions, PEP, and other watchlists required by your regulators or internal policies. Use the data source browser to check whether OpenSanctions covers them.
It also helps to identify any geographic or industry-specific requirements. If an essential source is missing, knowing that early is more useful than trying to work around the gap during integration.
Estimate how many people, organizations, payments, or other entities you need to screen and how often you will screen them. Include both onboarding checks and recurring screening of existing records.
Volume and update frequency help determine whether the Screening API or a locally operated integration is the better fit.
Names alone often produce ambiguous results. Dates of birth, countries, addresses, registration numbers, passport numbers, and other attributes can make screening more precise.
Review the data model and compare it with the fields available in your records. For vessels, companies, and securities, stable identifiers such as IMO numbers, company registration numbers, or ISINs can be especially useful.
Identify the system that holds the records you want to screen: for example, a CRM, ERP, payment platform, data warehouse, spreadsheet, or existing compliance application.
OpenSanctions does not provide ready-made integrations for those systems. Knowing where the data lives helps your engineering team decide where API calls, bulk-data processing, matching, and result handling should take place.
An in-house screening license covers use inside your own organization, such as screening customers, payments, suppliers, and other counterparties.
If you will embed OpenSanctions data or matching into a product or service used by your customers, you need a reseller or OEM license. Make this distinction early because it determines the commercial arrangement, even when the technical integration looks similar.
Consider your requirements for privacy, security, latency, scaling, and infrastructure ownership. The Screening API provides a managed service and the quickest integration. The on-premise API and bulk data keep screening within infrastructure you control and support high-volume or customized workflows.
Your preferred architecture does not need to be final. Sharing the constraints behind it will help us recommend an appropriate integration path.