Global Screening Services (GSS), a prominent RegTech innovator, has published its 2024/2025 Sanctions Survey, revealing key insights into how financial institutions are adapting to the evolving sanctions landscape.
The survey was developed in partnership with GSS’ Advisory Board Members, representing over 35 major international financial institutions (FIs), and sheds light on the challenges posed by increasingly complex sanctions requirements.
The findings indicate that 97% of institutions view collaboration as essential for effective compliance by 2025, highlighting the collective effort required to address sanctions’ growing complexity. Sanctions activity is rising in volume and frequency, with over 99.6% of sanctions alerts turning out to be false positives. These trends underline the importance of technological innovation in streamlining processes.
Geopolitical risks dominate sanctions concerns
Geopolitical tensions remain a significant factor in compliance challenges. The survey identified Russia as the highest sanctions risk (4.7/5), followed by Iran (4/5), with concerns also noted for China (3.5/5), Syria (3.3/5), and North Korea (3.1/5). Beyond geographic considerations, hidden relationships (4.4/5) and issues linked to Money Services Businesses (MSBs) (4.4/5) emerged as critical risks, reflecting the difficulties in identifying intermediaries and complex corporate structures.
AI transforming sanctions screening
Technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), is playing a pivotal role in transforming sanctions compliance. Every respondent to the survey agreed on the importance of these technologies in future sanctions screening processes. By enabling institutions to process large data volumes rapidly, AI reduces false positives and ensures more precise issue flagging for compliance teams.
Many financial institutions are already embracing technological advancements, with 45% adopting cloud-based solutions and 17% exploring blockchain for traceability improvements. These innovations aim to reduce friction in sanctions screening, where alert rates typically range from 5–15%.
The critical role of data quality
Despite technological progress, data quality remains a significant challenge, ranking as the second-highest issue (4/5) in the survey. The upcoming adoption of ISO 20022 by November 2025 represents a major step towards improving data formatting and structure, offering the potential to address unstructured data’s role in generating false positives.
GSS CEO and Co-founder Tom Scampion emphasised the importance of collaboration and innovation: “Sanctions compliance is more demanding than ever, with financial institutions facing a perfect storm of complexity, volume, and risk. Yet, what’s clear from our survey is that the industry isn’t standing still. With 97% of respondents agreeing that collaboration is essential, financial institutions are utilising shared expertise alongside technologies like AI and cloud solutions to tackle these challenges head-on.
“What’s really encouraging is seeing how financial institutions are adapting. Whether it’s improving data quality or gearing up for regulations like ISO 20022, they’re setting a higher standard for how compliance can work smarter in a more complex environment.”
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