Did you know that cooperation with unreliable clients who violated anti-money laundering (AML) legislation can destroy your reputation? Moreover, you can end up on OFAC, OFSI, or other sanction lists, or even pay a fine. So let’s figure out if there’s any workaround and how Sanctions Check for Zendesk Support can help you to save your face.
But first, it’s better to read a brief overview of OFAC and OFSI institutions, AML legislation, and KYC principles. Then, you will clearly understand the importance of being compliant and take a burden off your shoulders while checking your potential customers.
What is OFAC, and why it is so important?
OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) is the American financial intelligence and enforcement institution under the US Department of Treasury. The main goal of the OFAC is to prevent money laundering activity and enforce sanctions against hostile foreign governments, terrorists, drug dealers, or other individuals or organizations who can damage national security.
Anti-money regulations
One of the foundations of OFAC’s work is anti-money laundering regulations (AML). According to the AML, all transactions and other financial operations are under control. Consequently, companies must confirm their transparency and legality with currency reports.
Money laundering means hiding tax-evasion crimes, corruption, financing terrorist organizations or states, and drug trafficking. The main goal of AML rules is to improve customer identification and procedures for money laundering prevention and fighting.
Know Your Customer (KYC) principles
Know your customer (or client) means a set of guidelines that financial organizations usually use to identify the personality. They analyze the financial profile of a person and all risks involved with building business relationships. However, in recent years KYC processes have become a must-have in small-sized companies belonging to different industries, not only financial institutions or banks. Non-profit organizations, insurers, export creditors, and virtual assets dealers more often demand potential customers to provide due diligence information.
What is the main difference between OFAC and OFSI?
It’s simple. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) is another variation of the OFAC but works for Great Britain and has some nuances. Both organizations are the largest sanctions implementors and law enforcement institutions worldwide. Nevertheless, OFSI is much newer and primarily focused on sanctions (by comparison, OFAC has the authority to create measures and regulations) with less background.
What’s more, OFAC and OFSI tightly cooperate, especially during the implementation of sanctions against Russia after it invaded Ukraine.
Why should the company be OFAC or OFSI compliant?
Every transaction and financial operation in the USA or Great Britain goes through the OFAC and OFSI regulations. So, even if your company works legally, you should check your customers on being under sanctions. Otherwise, if you are doing business with companies from the OFAC or OFSI list, you violate laws, and such an operation automatically becomes illegal.
How to check clients’ reputations easily?
The only way to save your reputation is to check every client on being listed. Some organizations spend costs for third-party agencies to do it. Many companies do it themselves, spending a lot of time using complicated online searches. Nevertheless, try the Sanctions Check app if you are a Zendesk Support user. It will break all roadblocks on your way and become a timesaver!
Sanctions Check for Zendesk Support – How does it work?
The Sanctions Check app is worth trying If you are looking for a tool that helps to reduce nerve-wracking work during client compliance checking. But, what is the app flow? Let’s take a look at its main advantages.
- Provide a search from two places
After the app installation, you can easily combine your customer support activity with sanction checking or appoint a responsible person. That’s because you can do everything from the Zendesk instance. Forget about switching back and forth between tabs, as a checking sidebar is right next to your ticket body in the app section. Just click on the “Search” button to see whether your contact is inside the OFAC or OFSI sanction list.
Source: Sanctions Check for Zendesk
If there’s no ticket for a specific person or entity, go directly to the app’s homepage and enter the name. There are also two types of search available, for the person and the entity. On the bottom of the page, you will see whether the customer was listed. Congrats if not, you can continue business cooperating with them.
Source: Sanctions Check for Zendesk
- Keep search results
What’s great about the Sanctions Check, apart from its easy search, is that all results are stored in the search history. That means you can save your limited queries within any subscription plan. Moreover, you can track agents’ performance if other agents use the app.
Source: Sanctions Check for Zendesk
- Set automated activity (Coming soon!)
Our team is about to continue developing a new automation feature. It will help to save time, even more, when you need to follow your personal or organizational profile regularly. As things change, those who were reliable yesterday can get on the list tomorrow. And setting up automation can prevent you from slipping out any violator of your sight.
- Add your custom list anytime
There are not only OFAC or OFSI lists worldwide, so you can contact us and add others. Furthermore, you are entitled to compile your blocklist with those who somehow harmed your business or failed communication. Contact our support rep around-the-clock before or anytime after the app installation, and our developers will add any custom list. We guarantee the total safety of your data.
Wrapping up
Cooperating with sanctioned customers can undermine your reputation and the credibility of potential partners. Today, the problem of checking customers is crucial as ever before, and the number of organizations or persons who fell under the sanctions considerably increased. OFAC and OFSI institutions cooperate to struggle against money laundering so all financial operations are under strict control.
Despite that, any Zendesk user can perform support together with Sanctions Check from GrowthDot in one fell swoop. Complying with OFSI and OFAC regulations can become an ordinary process for your company. So, contact us and enjoy ready-to-use Zendesk integration.
