Unum UK Enhances Sanctions Screening and Keeps a Responsive Compliance Partner with FinScan

Unum is a specialist employee benefits provider in the UK, offering group protection products including group life insurance, group income protection, and dental and cash plan cover to employers on behalf of their employees. Operating a low-risk group insurance model and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority, Unum relies on sanctions and watchlist screening to meet the compliance obligations of its financial crime function. A FinScan customer since 2009, Unum upgraded to FinScan Focus on a hosted cloud platform in 2022. The measurable improvement in daily workload came from the technology. The speed at which it was delivered came from the support relationship behind it.

With hundreds of thousands of records under ongoing screening, Unum enhanced their screening program and gained a support team that resolves questions and delivers changes in days rather than weeks, months, or even years.

Challenges & Goals

The Solution

Results

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Challenges & Goals

Enhancing a screening program more than a decade in the making

Unum had run its sanctions screening on FinScan for more than a decade, and in that time both the volume of data and the systems feeding it had changed considerably. The team's goal was to enhance the screening approach. Achieving that called for a technical upgrade and a partner willing to work through the detail alongside the compliance team.

Key challenges included:

• Enhancing configurations. The matching rules, fuzzy logic, and string settings needed to be revisited as Unum's data grew and changed.

• Technology ecosystem. Review of upstream systems that were creating duplicates that inflated the volume of potential matches.

• An on-premise footprint. Running the platform in-house required Unum's IT team to manage overnight batches and resolve issues, which drew resources away from other priorities.

• Moving at the speed of business. A need for faster change cycles that aligned to Unum’s overall business and regulatory needs.

  
  

Before selecting a direction, Unum conducted a competitive review, evaluating alternative vendors. It found that none matched FinScan on value or on the quality of the support relationship, and chose to upgrade its existing platform.

"We narrowed it down to a few other players and still found that, with what FinScan was offering with the upgrade to the cloud, we would much rather stay. Nobody was offering as much value and support in this transition." —Sue Round, Deputy MLRO, Unum

The Solution

A hosted upgrade, delivered collaboratively

Unum migrated to FinScan Focus as a hosted cloud solution, using the upgrade to enhance its screening configuration. The project took several weeks. Throughout, Unum’s administrator worked directly with the FinScan team on fuzzy logic and matching rules, an approach that improved the configuration and gave the compliance function confidence in how screening decisions were reached.

“The FinScan team were patient and explained it all very well. It gave us a lot of comfort knowing how it was working behind the scenes.”  — Sue Round, Deputy MLRO, Unum

The solution includes:

• Sanctions and watchlist screening. Unum uses FinScan Focus to screen hundreds of thousands of active records against sanctions and watchlists, with list data supplied through Dow Jones.

• Reconfigured matching. The upgrade included a full review of fuzzy logic, string matching, and rules, worked through collaboratively with Unum’s team to reflect current data and reduce unnecessary alerts.

• Beneficial ownership screening. Unum expanded its use of beneficial owner information already available within the platform, which replaced a manual step.

• Hosted infrastructure and support. With the platform hosted by Innovative Systems, batch processing, monitoring, and issue resolution are handled by the FinScan support team rather than Unum’s internal IT function.

• Responsive help desk access. When Unum has a question or a change request, the support team responds quickly and keeps the work moving.

Results

A lighter daily workload, delivered and supported at pace

The upgrade reduced the daily screening workload, and the support relationship determined how quickly Unum saw the benefit and how easily it could build on it.

Key outcomes include:

• Lower match volumes. Daily potential matches fell while true hits were maintained.

• Changes delivered in days. When Unum added a new product source, FinScan implemented it rapidly in days.

• Reduced IT involvement and infrastructure cost. Overnight batch management moved to the FinScan support team, and the move off on-premise servers reduced maintenance and the associated costs.

• A cleaner beneficial ownership process. Using beneficial owner data within FinScan streamlined the team’s workflow.

  
  

“Whatever we ask FinScan, we get quick answers and results back. We are very happy.”  — Sue Round, Deputy MLRO, Unum

With an enhanced, fully hosted platform and a support team that responds at pace, Unum has both a lighter daily workload and a partner it can rely on as new products and requirements arise.