Industry screening guides: OFAC and sanctions workflows

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Choose the question you need to answer

A useful sector workflow identifies the legal parties, operational checkpoints, reviewer responsibilities, and evidence the business actually needs. It does not simply replace a bank’s name in a generic compliance checklist. These guides separate identity screening from each sector’s other required controls.

Use these procedural guides alongside the commercial industry pages. Real-estate and title workflows distinguish current FinCEN reporting status from sanctions obligations. Insurance guidance distinguishes covered-product requirements. Fintech and crypto guides keep name screening separate from transaction or blockchain analysis.

Understand the scope and the first decision

OFAC screening for auto dealers: a deal-file workflow. Build a dealership OFAC review process for buyers and business customers, with useful identity comparisons, exception handling, and retained decisions.

OFAC screening for real estate: parties, timing, and evidence. Organize sanctions checks for a real-estate transaction without confusing identity screening, ownership research, and FinCEN reporting requirements.

OFAC screening for title companies: a closing-file checklist. Connect sanctions checks, changed parties, candidate review, and closing-file evidence without treating a search result as permission to disburse.

Sanctions screening for fintech: onboarding through monitoring. Design a fintech sanctions workflow with explicit source scope, safe failure states, human review, and ongoing monitoring linked to customer identity.

AML screening API for fintech: a safe integration design. Integrate the sanctions-screening part of an AML workflow with server-side keys, idempotency, review states, monitoring, and retained evidence.

Build the review and operating process

OFAC screening for lenders: borrowers, entities, and review. Define lender sanctions checks for the actual borrower and related parties, with documented review, source scope, and separate credit decisions.

OFAC screening for insurance: policy parties and claims review. Map insurance sanctions checks to policy roles and review checkpoints while keeping covered-product AML duties and claims decisions separate.

Sanctions screening for crypto businesses: identity and wallet controls. Separate customer-name screening from blockchain analytics, with defined source coverage, investigation evidence, and ongoing customer monitoring.

Sanctions screening for money services businesses. Connect MSB customer screening, source-specific review, and ongoing monitoring without confusing sanctions checks with transaction monitoring or reporting.

Sanctions screening for nonprofits: partners and program controls. Build proportionate nonprofit sanctions checks for selected partners and suppliers, with careful identity review and separate authorization analysis.

Keep the related controls connected

OFAC’s 50 Percent Rule and the limits of name screening. Understand OFAC’s 50 Percent Rule with synthetic ownership examples, a review checklist, and the limits of a sanctions list search.

OFAC screening requirements: obligations and practical controls. Separate OFAC legal obligations from screening procedures. Build coverage, review, escalation, recordkeeping, and testing controls around your actual risk.

How to document a sanctions screening decision. Use an evidence-led sanctions review note with source references, identity comparisons, unresolved facts, reviewer approval, and a separate business disposition.

Use the guide as part of a defined procedure

These pages explain workflows and product boundaries. They do not establish whether a specific person is a listed identity, replace current official guidance, or decide whether a transaction is authorized. Keep the source comparison, remaining uncertainty, required review, and separate business action in the record.

For product behavior, use the published documentation and current source coverage. For a customer or vendor workflow, start with the actual legal party and preserve the evidence behind the decision.