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Northward Screening
Sanctions, PEP and adverse-media screening for compliance teams. Screen a customer or business in seconds, manage potential matches to a decision, and stay alerted when a match's status later changes. Crypto wallet and email addresses too, as add-ons.
How it works
Screen. Decide. Monitor.
1, Screen
Fuzzy matching that catches spelling variants, aliases and transliterations, not just exact matches. Each result shows the matched entity, the list source, a match score and the supporting evidence.
A crypto wallet address is the exception, matched exactly and with no score. An email address is matched exactly too, with one weaker signal kept separate.
2, Decide
A match at or above your threshold opens a case automatically. Queue, assignment, escalation, SLA, and a required rationale on every decision.
3, Monitor
We watch the entities your customers already matched and re-screen when one is updated or delisted, then raise an alert showing the before and after.
Capabilities
What it covers, stated exactly.
| Capability | Scope |
|---|---|
| Sanctions | The eight lists named below, refreshed daily. |
| Crypto wallets | A digital-asset address screened against the sanctioned addresses published by OFAC, the UK and the EU. A match is the address rather than a candidate, so there is nothing to score. How exact matching works. |
| Email addresses | An address checked against sanctioned addresses and sanctioned organisation domains. A sanctioned name appearing inside an address is also surfaced, as a review signal rather than a match. What each kind of hit means. An add-on, off by default. |
| PEP | An advisory check, sourced from CIA World Leaders and US Federal Officials. Surfaced for review; it never inflates the sanctions verdict. Not a comprehensive global PEP database. |
| Adverse media | A signal from open news sources (GDELT, Google News), returned as headlines with links and a category. Not an exhaustive or licensed media feed. |
| Batch | Upload a CSV and screen every row in one job, with per-row status and an exportable result. |
| Ongoing monitoring | Re-screens the entities a customer already matched when those entities change, scoped per organisation. |
| Cases | Queue, round-robin assignment, escalation with a required note, SLA tracking, and an append-only audit trail. |
Crypto wallet screening
An address is on a list, or it is not.
- Matching is exact. No threshold, no score, no judgement call.
- Exact, not literal. Case is normalised before comparing.
- A match names the owner. Entity, programme, asset, address.
- A clean result is narrow. Not on the lists today, nothing more.
| What a match shows | Example |
|---|---|
| Sanctioned entity | The designated owner the address is attributed to |
| Programme | The designation it falls under, for example OFAC’s Russia, DPRK or IRGC programmes |
| Asset | The chain or token the address belongs to |
| Address | The address as published, so you can check it against your own record |
More than a thousand addresses, across around twenty assets. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, Tether, USDC, Litecoin, Monero, Dash, Zcash, Solana and Dogecoin among them.
Email screening
Three kinds of hit, and they are not equal.
- Often the only identifier you have. At onboarding, before anything else.
- Normalised before matching. A listed address is not missed on formatting alone.
- A shared provider is not a domain hit. Consumer mailboxes are excluded from that check alone.
- The weak signal stays weak. Raised for review, never returned as confirmed.
- A clean result is narrow. Not on those lists today, nothing more.
| What matched | What it means |
|---|---|
| The address itself | The address appears on a sanctions list. The strongest of the three. |
| The domain | The address sits on a sanctioned organisation’s domain, even where that particular mailbox is not listed. |
| A name inside it | A sanctioned person’s name appears inside an address that has never itself been listed. A reason to look, not a finding. |
Around 1,500 sanctioned addresses, compiled from OFAC, the UK, the EU and the UN, and refreshed as those lists update. The name lists run to more than 50,000.
Coverage
The sanctions lists we screen against, by issuing authority.
Highlighted below are the authorities whose lists we run, not countries under sanctions.
Issuing authority we screen UN, not a territory
| Issuing authority | List |
|---|---|
| United States | OFAC SDN List |
| United Nations | UN Security Council Consolidated List |
| United Kingdom | UK Sanctions List (FCDO) |
| European Union | EU Consolidated Sanctions |
| Australia | Australia DFAT Consolidated List |
| Canada | Consolidated Autonomous List (SEMA + JVCFOA) |
| Canada | Listed Terrorist Entities (Criminal Code) |
| Canada | FACFOA (Corrupt Foreign Officials) |
The table above is the NAME lists. The other two checks draw on a narrower set. Wallet addresses are published by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union. Email addresses come from those three and the United Nations. The remaining authorities designate entities without publishing either.
Canada is covered five ways. SEMA and JVCFOA are separate statutes that Canada publishes as one consolidated list. FACFOA is its own list. Listed terrorist entities come from the Criminal Code. And the UN Security Council list applies in Canada through the United Nations Act, which is why it is not somebody else’s problem. Most providers mean SEMA alone when they say “Canada”. Lists are synchronised daily.
Built for compliance
Separation of duties, enforced rather than assumed.
Analysts review, clear and escalate, but cannot confirm a true match. Only a Compliance Manager can, and that cannot be bypassed, including through the API. Admins and the owner cannot either.
Every decision requires a rationale, and the audit trail is append-only: every action is recorded with actor and timestamp and cannot be edited or deleted.
For developers
Screening as an API.
- Bearer API keys, test and live, shown once and stored hashed.
- Single screen, batch screen, read results, list and decide cases.
- Wallet and email screening on their own endpoints, single or batch. An email result says which of the three kinds of hit it is, so you can treat them differently.
- HMAC-signed webhooks so the receiver can verify every delivery, with retries and delivery logs.
- Sanctions, wallets, email, PEP and adverse media are switched on independently, so you run only the checks you need.
- A wallet or email match carries the same shape as a name match, so it reaches the cases you already have and the webhooks you already receive. Nothing to integrate again.
- Rate limiting and input validation throughout.
POST /v1/screen
Authorization: Bearer sk_live_…
{
"name": "Example Trading Ltd",
"type": "business",
"dimensions": ["sanctions","pep"]
}POST /v1/screen/wallet
Authorization: Bearer sk_live_…
{
"address": "1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa"
}POST /v1/screen/email
Authorization: Bearer sk_live_…
{
"email": "ops@example.com"
}
Base URL screening.northwardcompliance.com/v1. All three have a
/batch form.
Screen one name and see.
Free, one per organisation, result by email. No call required first.