The sanctions screening trap: 95% of alerts are false positives — here’s the fix

Amber McDonnell
Aug 29
4 min read

Author: Amber McDonnell

There's a moment that happens in every compliance team, usually around 2 PM on a Wednesday, when someone stares at their screen and asks the existential question that haunts modern financial crime operations:

"How is it possible that we're more sophisticated than ever, yet drowning in meaningless alerts?"

It's a fair question. We've built screening systems that can scan millions of names against sanctions lists in milliseconds. We've deployed AI that can spot suspicious transaction patterns across global networks. It's fair to say systems have progressed substantially in the fight against Financial Crime compared to just a decade ago.

And yet, 95% of the alerts these systems generate are false positives. We've somehow convinced ourselves this is acceptable, even inevitable.

The sanctions screening trap: 95% of alerts are false positives

Compliance teams have been told that more alerts equal more protection. But here’s the reality:

Most screening systems prioritise detection, not decision-making.
95%+ of alerts are false positives that clog investigation pipelines.
Valuable human expertise is spent chasing noise, not real threats.

The real compliance problem: a context collapse

The false positive problem is just the surface symptom of a deeper malaise: context collapse.

Here's what actually happens when a screening alert lands on an analyst's desk: They receive a notification that "John Smith" has matched against a sanctions list. To investigate properly, they need to:

Jump to the screening system to see match details and the specific sanctions list
Review the payment details (amount, currency, beneficiary, originator, routing)
Check the payment management system for authorisation and purpose codes
Open the case management system to review previous screening decisions for this entity
Search email threads for correspondent banking communications and payment queries
Access KYC repositories for beneficial ownership and entity documentation
Cross-reference adverse media databases for additional context on matched entities

By the time they've assembled enough information to make an informed decision, they've used 6+ different systems, opened 14 browser tabs, and spent 37 minutes on what should be a two-minute assessment.

This isn't compliance work. This is information archaeology with a side of memory gymnastics.

Enter the elegant solution: ComplyStream's context assembly tool

Which brings us to why ComplyStream approached screening alerts differently. Instead of building another system that generates more alerts, we asked a more fundamental question: What if the problem isn't the alerts themselves, but how we experience them?

Our solution is deceptively simple: high context, low effort.

Instead of sending analysts on a scavenger hunt across multiple systems, we bring everything to them. When a screening alert appears in ComplyStream, it comes with its entire universe of relevant context already assembled:

Real-time alert consolidation - related hits grouped into unified customer cases
Side-by-side comparison - screening data next to full customer and related party profiles
Related entity linking - directors, shareholders, and UBOs automatically connected
AI-enhanced case intelligence - instant overviews, entity breakdowns, and risk insights
Integrated document handling - upload, categorise, and summarise supporting docs
Seamless resolution workflows - take action and close alerts in one unified interface

But the real breakthrough isn't in what we show — it's in how we connect the dots.

ComplyStream's real-time synchronisation

The real innovation lies in the synchronisation. ComplyStream creates a living, two-way conversation between your screening system and your case management operations.

When an analyst comments, the update is visible across all systems. When a decision is made, it propagates instantly. No silos. No duplication. No confusion.

This isn't just technical synchronisation but compliance coherence. Your systems don't just share data; they share understanding.

The audit trail becomes singular and complete. No more wondering whether the screening system and case management platform are telling the same story. They are the same story, told in real-time across multiple interfaces.

Intelligent integration for seamless compliance

Whether you're using a third-party screening provider, a homegrown rules engine, or multiple sources of alerts, ComplyStream integrates seamlessly, bringing context, communication, and control into one place.

What makes this particularly powerful is the unified comments thread. Analysts can now have complete conversations about screening alerts without ever leaving ComplyStream. Questions, decisions, approvals, and follow-ups all happen in one chronological thread that's visible across both platforms.

When adverse media articles surface — those crucial pieces of context that can make or break a screening decision — they appear directly within the case interface. No more hunting through separate media monitoring systems. No more wondering if you've found all the relevant information.

The investigation becomes effortless not because we've removed the complexity, but because we've organised it intelligently.

The philosophy of focus: Human time reclaimed

This brings us to the deeper philosophical question:

What is a compliance analyst's time actually worth?

When we automate the entire alert journey — the delivery, the sorting, the filing, the synchronising — we free up the most valuable asset in the entire process: human expertise.

With systems handling the busy work, compliance professionals can focus on what they do best: pattern recognition, risk assessment, strategic thinking, and nuanced decision-making. The things that require human judgment, contextual understanding, and professional experience.

In other words, actual compliance work.

The future road for ComplyStream and modern compliance

We're not stopping here. Additional pre-alert integrations are coming to our roadmap, each designed with the same philosophy: automate the mundane, amplify the meaningful.

Because the future of compliance isn't about generating more alerts or building more sophisticated screening technology. It's about creating systems intelligent enough to present only the information that matters, organised in ways that make human expertise more powerful, not more overwhelmed.

The alert paradox has a solution. It just requires us to stop thinking about screening as a detection problem and start treating it as a context problem.

The technology exists. The integration is live. The only question remaining is: are you ready to let your analysts do actual compliance work again?