Watchlist screening doesn't have to mean piecing together patchy match data and Googling names for hours to clear alerts that were never likely to be your client or contact in the first place.

Over the past few months, Legl has been upgrading the watchlist screening experience to make reviews faster and better matched to how your firm works. Screening now fits your firm's own risk policy rather than a fixed default, AI-enabled screening groups and categorises the alerts for you, and when an alert does need a decision, Legl now gathers the evidence for you automatically.

The thread running through all of this is deeper alignment with your firm’s risk policy, enhanced automation and a faster experience for your team and for your clients.

Screening tuned to your firm

Watchlist screening has traditionally returned the same broad set of results to every firm, so a lot of what reached a reviewer was not relevant to how that firm assesses risk.

Configurable screening profiles change that by letting you decide what your screening returns. You set which categories run, from sanctions through to adverse media, along with which politically exposed persons tiers you include and how strictly names should match. A live preview shows the effect of each change before you save, so you can set screening to your firm's risk policy rather than accept a default someone else chose.

Setting up your screening profile means the alerts your team sees are the ones your firm has decided are worth seeing.

AI-assisted watchlist screening reduces false positives

When a screening runs in Legl, AI-assisted watchlist screening assesses each remaining match against the details you hold to judge how likely the match is to be genuine, then flags the reasoning behind that judgement. AI-assisted screening works inside the criteria you've already set, so your profile filters out the categories you don't want, and the AI reduces the AML false positives among the ones you do.

Your team is left with a shorter list, and fewer obvious non-matches to clear before reaching the alerts that need a real decision.

The evidence gathered for you

The Ongoing Monitoring dashboard has also been overhauled to make your reviews faster, and the new experience is live now.

When you open an individual watchlist alert, the review page brings the evidence onto one page instead of leaving you to assemble the picture across multiple screens. The page sets out what was flagged and puts the individual’s details side by side with the watchlist entity, then searches publicly available sources to fill the gaps. On finding a relevant record, the page shows you what was taken and where from, so you can see at a glance that a date of birth came from a named public source and doesn't match.

The page then recommends whether the alert relates to the individual with the evidence attached. This is automation applied to the slowest part of the job: the manual research a reviewer used to do by leaving the platform to Google a name is done by the time the alert is opened. A faster review here also means a quicker answer for the individual waiting on the other side of onboarding.

You stay in control of every decision

A recommendation is a starting point, not a verdict. The review page gathers the evidence and offers a view, but your team confirms each alert and marks the alert as reviewed. Alerts are not closed automatically on the recommendation alone.

Doing the research for you does not move the decision away from you. Because every source checked and every search run is logged and can be opened, your audit trail is stronger than a manual review, not weaker. The Money Laundering Regulations expect a risk-based approach you can evidence, and if a regulator or an internal reviewer asks what was checked and why, the answer is on the page.

What this means for your team

The compliance team and the MLRO typically carry the work of reviewing screening alerts, and most of that has gone on low-value confirmations that a flagged individual clearly isn't your client or the person in question. These updates target that work directly so teams are freed up to spend time on the higher risk matters that require closer attention.

Your team reviews fewer alerts and spends far less time on the ones that aren't the individual you’re reviewing, whilst maintaining a consistent, auditable approach. The workflow itself doesn't change. Alerts arrive the same way, the review and audit steps are unchanged, and the underlying reports are still there. What changes is how much of the groundwork is done before you make the call.

Where to start

If your team spends a lot of time triaging and clearing low likely match alerts, start with a screening profile that reflects how your firm already assesses risk, and use the preview to check the effect before you save. From there, the AI-assisted screening and the new review experience accelerates the work the rest of the work, freeing up time across teams to focus on the high risk matters.

You can read the full guide to individual monitoring settings in the Legl Help Centre, or book a demo with the Legl team today.

Sources

• Solicitors Regulation Authority — Your AML obligations
• Financial Conduct Authority — FG25/3: Treatment of politically exposed persons
• legislation.gov.uk — The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017
• Financial Action Task Force — The FATF Recommendations (the risk-based approach)