What is it?

The Politically Exposed Person (aka PEP) report screens an individual to determine if they are an individual who is or has been entrusted with a prominent function by a local, regional, national or international governmental body. If someone is identified as a politically exposed person, they have a greater risk for financial institutions with regard to AML and CFT (Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism) measures. Additionally, the PEP report can surface matches against relatives and close associates of prominent individuals, as these are also viewed as a potential source given their connections with the PEPs.

Dashboard view

If there is an identity match, attributes about each match will be shown. Note that not all matches will have all of the sections below; the information may vary depending on the PEP.

Interpreting the report in Dashboard

Position

Within a given class section, all the positions associated with an individual are listed. If the individual is a relative or close associate, these positions will be listed at the same class level as the person they are related to.

Class

Each position a PEP has held is categorized by a risk level. If the individual is a relative or close associate, these positions will be listed at the same class level as the person they are related to. The risk level for each type of position is listed below and follows the stated classification system:

PEP Class Types

High risk: pep-class-1

• National head of government or head of state (e.g. President, Prime minister, Queen, etc.)
• National executive/cabinet
• National legislature
• National court judges, prosecutors
• Security and intelligence services including military, police
• Central Bank leadership
• National political party leadership

Medium risk: pep-class-2

• Diplomatic missions
• Intergovernmental organizations senior leadership, legislators
• Regional/sub-national head of government (e.g. Governor, Premier)
• Regional/sub-national executive/cabinet
• Regional/sub-national legislature
• Regional/sub-national court judges

Medium risk: pep-class-3

Leaders of state-owned enterprises, public entities, and agencies reporting to national government

Low risk: pep-class-4

• Local head of government (e.g. Mayor)
• Local executive (e.g. Mayoral committee member)
• Local legislature

Identity matches

If the provided input matches multiple PEP records, the identity matches will be listed on the left side of the report so you can review each match.

Portrait

When available, a portrait of the PEP will be provided to give you additional signal as to the validity of the match.

Positions

All known positions a PEP has held are listed in a table that shows the position name, duration, PEP class, and category. The table can be sorted by each of the column headers.

Relationships

If applicable, known relatives and close associates will be shown in a table that shows each individual’s name, relation to the PEP, PEP class, and relationship type.

Sources

Sources are provided in the event that you wish to examine the evidence indicating that an individual is a PEP.

Interpreting the API response

• result: Result is a list of person hits that come back as politically exposed

• positions: Positions are a list of relevant positions that are flagged as having some kind of risk level. A single item in this list has the following attributes:

  1. name: the name of this position
  2. pep-class: the risk level of this position
  3. source-key: a slug that maps to a key in sources

• sources: The sources object is a map in which the key is a value from the source-key in the positions object and the value is an object with the following attributes:

  1. url: the url of this source
  2. name: the name of this source e.g. UK Parliament
  3. flag-code: the associated country of this source

Associated Workflow criteria

You may want to automate your decisioning process based on information from the PEP report, such as running different risk class levels through different checks, or only leveraging a subset of PEP risk classes based on your screening criteria. In order to do this successfully, you will need to build a workflow. Please contact your account owner or contact the Persona support team for help building your workflows and see below for a list of supported criteria:

• Continuous Run: Checks whether or not this was a continuous run
• Match Found: Whether or not there was any match against the PEP report.
• PEP Class Types: If the report has a match, the different PEP classes the PEP report matches against.

FAQ

How often are lists updated?

We check our PEP sources for updates once per day.

Disclaimer

Persona is not a consumer reporting agency and the services (and the data provided as part of its services) do not constitute a ‘consumer report’ for the purposes of the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The data and reports we provide to you may not be used, in whole or in part, to: make any consumer debt collection decision, establish a consumer’s eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, government benefits, or housing, or for any other purpose authorized under the FCRA. If you use any of any of our services, you agree not to use them, or the data, for any purpose authorized under the FCRA or in relation to taking an adverse action relating to a consumer application.