In this article we have gathered several Adverse Media related FAQs.
Q: The Platform performed an Adverse Media check but didn’t show an article we found on Google. Why?
A: Not all news pieces qualify as credible Adverse Media, and therefore would not be included in the report. Adverse Media relates, generally speaking, to fines or other enforcement measures taken by competent authorities against an individual or corporate. These need to be based on an official report, or a report in a highly credible media outlet about such action. These need to be also in relevant fields such as financial crime, fraud, bribery, corruption, organised crime, terrorism, modern slavery and cybercrime.
Q: Why does my screening data keep changing even though no new events have occurred?
A: The global information ecosystem is undergoing a structural transformation. Over the past several years, three concurrent developments have fundamentally altered how adverse media and risk-relevant data becomes available:
Digital archival acceleration. Newspapers, court registries, regulatory bodies, and government agencies worldwide are actively digitising historical records that previously existed only in print, microfiche, or localised databases. A court judgment from 2008 or a regulatory enforcement action from 2012 may only now be appearing in searchable digital form for the first time. The information itself is not new, but its digital availability is.
AI-powered extraction at scale. Modern natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning models can now parse, classify, and extract structured data from unstructured sources (scanned PDFs, foreign-language publications, archived web content) at a speed and accuracy that was not previously possible. Data sources are deploying these technologies to process vast quantities of source material, which means historical information is being “discovered” by automated systems even though it may have been publicly accessible in some form for years (note, that even though the material is now “discovered” by AI, every piece is still vetted by human to assure full alignment with methodology.
Expanded source coverage. Data sources are continuously added to monitoring. As these new source feeds come online, they bring with them historical data from those sources that enters the screening ecosystem for the first time.
That is why additional data-points keep being added. In this regard, it is worth noting that regulatory guidance across major jurisdictions has consistently emphasised the importance of ongoing monitoring precisely because the information environment is not static. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the European Banking Authority (EBA), and national regulators recognise that adverse media screening is only as effective as the data universe it draws from; and that universe is expanding, casting an ever-wider net as data becomes available.