Adverse media (negative news) screening
Overview. Adverse-media screening looks for negative news about a verified client, giving you a reputational-risk signal alongside PEP and sanctions screening. It is switched on automatically for every account with Tranche 2 enabled, so if you run the Tranche 2 flow there is nothing extra to turn on. Accounts that are not on Tranche 2 can switch it on independently. The results appear on their own tab and can be included in the report PDF.
Does it check for negative news?
Yes. Adverse media, sometimes called negative news, is credible reporting that links a person to conduct you would want to know about before taking them on, for example fraud or other serious wrongdoing. Screening for it is a recognised part of understanding a client's risk, over and above whether they appear on a sanctions or PEP list.
In IdentityCheck, adverse-media screening runs on a client you have verified, giving you a reputational-risk signal that sits alongside your PEP/Sanctions result on the same verification. So rather than being a separate exercise, it is an additional layer on the check you already ran: you confirm who the person is, and you also get a read on whether there is adverse media associated with their name.
It is best thought of as a supporting signal for your own judgement. A negative-news result is a prompt to look more closely, in the same way a possible PEP or sanctions match is, and to record what you found and what you concluded.
What does it search?
Once a client passes verification, IdentityCheck takes their full legal name and runs a live web search across Google, Bing and Yahoo, covering more than 15,000 sites in 195 countries and 11 languages. The sources it draws on are the ones that matter for risk: local and international news, tax offices, police, financial-crime and criminal-investigation sites, and most-wanted lists.
To keep the noise down, the search deliberately excludes social media, tabloids, blogs, untrusted news, open-collaboration sites and paid-article sites. Cutting those out reduces false positives, so the results you review are more likely to be relevant.
The matching is tuned to catch real matches without drowning you in noise. Nicknames, common typos, name translation and organisation abbreviations are all matched by default. Glued-together names are off by default and can be switched on by raising a support request, and fuzzy matching is coming soon. Real-time monitoring is available on request.
How is it switched on?
For any account with Tranche 2 enabled, adverse-media screening is already on, so Tranche 2 customers do not need to enable it separately. If your firm is not using Tranche 2, an admin can switch it on independently with the Toggle Adverse Media setting in the platform.
A couple of things are worth knowing:
- It is an admin-level setting, so it is switched on once for the account rather than per check.
- The settings screen notes that additional charges may apply, so switching it on is a deliberate decision your firm makes, not something that happens silently.
Once it is on, it runs as part of the screening that follows a passed verification, so there is no extra step in your day-to-day workflow.
Where do the results appear?
Adverse-media results show on an Adverse Media tab on the verification, so they sit right next to the PEP/Sanctions results and the identity details. As with sanctions screening, the tab shows either a clear "No matches found" or a list of possible-match cards you can expand to see the detail behind them.
When you download a verification's report PDF, you can tick to include the adverse-media section, so your keepable evidence document reflects the full picture: the identity check, the PEP/Sanctions result and the negative-news result together. That makes it easy to show, in a single file, that you ran a rounded set of checks on a client and what those checks returned.
Because adverse media is a supporting signal, treat a result as a starting point for review rather than a conclusion. You look at what was surfaced, decide whether it genuinely relates to your client and matters for your risk assessment, and record your reasoning as part of your customer-due-diligence file.
Frequently asked
Does IdentityCheck check for negative news? Yes, as an optional check. When switched on, a verified client is checked for adverse media (negative news) alongside PEP and sanctions screening, giving you an extra reputational-risk signal on the same verification.
How do I turn adverse-media screening on? For accounts with Tranche 2 enabled it is already on, so there is nothing to do. If you are not on Tranche 2, an admin can switch it on independently with the Toggle Adverse Media setting. The settings screen notes that additional charges may apply, so it is a deliberate choice your firm opts into.
Where do the adverse-media results appear? On an Adverse Media tab on the verification, shown as either "No matches found" or a list of possible-match cards you can expand. You can also include the adverse-media section when you download the report PDF.
Is adverse-media screening a pass or fail? No. It is a supporting reputational-risk signal, not a decision. A negative-news result is a prompt to look more closely and record your judgement, not an automatic verdict on your client.