New Pega Smart Investigate Features Help Banks Speed Financial Sanction Reviews

Out-of-the-box workflows automate payment investigations and help keep banks in compliance

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), the low-code platform provider that builds agility into the world's leading organizations, today announced enhancements to Pega Smart Investigate™ making it easier for banks to manage financial sanction investigations. For the first time, banks can now automate the process directly from their Swift-based exceptions management software with out-of-the-box workflows – saving investigators valuable time while reducing the risk of errors and non-compliance.

Recent world geopolitical events have led to an increase in economic sanctions, which aim to block transactions linked to illegal activities such as terrorism, drug trade, or human rights violations. Enforcement of these sanctions largely falls on financial institutions, which are now burdened with a significant rise in new cases. These complex investigations typically take place over email, phone, and other free-form channels outside of the bank's core exceptions platform. This not only lengthens the time to resolution, it can also result in costly manual errors and make compliance tracking more difficult.

Pega Smart Investigate is the only payment exceptions solution on the market that provides pre-built Swift-based workflows to facilitate more efficient information requests for financial sanctions investigations. Pega automates the process from end-to-end using the same Swift messaging standards that banks already use to securely communicate with each other. As a result, payment exceptions teams can realize: