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Informative Research Helps Lenders Achieve
USA PATRIOT Act Compliance With New OFAC Alert Screening
Service
GARDEN GROVE, Calif., August 1
– Informative Research (IR) announced today that its
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) service, designed
to assist lenders in gaining compliance with the USA PATRIOT
Act, is fully functioning months ahead of the federal October
1, 2003 deadline for financial institutions.
The OFAC Alert service is another example
of Informative Research’s Commitment
to Customer Excellence, providing superior products
and services according to its business partners’ needs.
Millions of people apply for mortgage loans every year and
Informative Research wants to ensure that its customers
– brokers, lenders and banking institutions –
can protect themselves from the time and cost of manually
checking prospective borrowers against the OFAC-prohibited
list of known or suspected terrorist members. “Informative
Research is in the business of providing information that
is essential to the loan decisioning process. Our customers
have come to expect the superior service quality that IR
represents, and the OFAC Alert is a natural extension of
our ongoing Commitment to Customer Excellence,” said
Rob Shirley, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Informative
Research.
The OFAC screening service streamlines
lender compliance initiatives by matching borrower names,
addresses and federal tax ID numbers against the OFAC database
of Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) and Blocked Persons.
IR provides the OFAC service for free to its customers as
an opt-in choice on the credit report purchase. While IR
fully expects that most customers will choose to enable
this service, they are committed to allowing customers the
freedom of choice in their credit reporting transactions.
IR’s new service uses the OFAC-maintained
database of over 5000 suspicious names. When a borrower
name match occurs, a message shows up on the credit report
to tell the financial institution that the applicant matched
an SDN, and that further verification is required. Should
no match occur, the credit report will show a printable
“no results” message. This new service can be
ordered along with any traditional credit report and is
supported via automated processing engines.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control is
assigned the task of administering and enforcing U.S. sanction
policies against specific foreign countries, persons and
organizations that sponsor terrorism and narcotics trafficking,
and as a result, issued this tri-action mandate in association
with the USA PATRIOT Act. The compliance rules apply solely
to financial institutions, but IR is specially situated
to assist its customers in meeting the terms of the compliance
process. By October 1, 2003, financial institutions must
comply with the following expectations: 1) Launch a customer
identification program to verify the identity of any person
who applies to open an account; 2) Keep records of the information
used to verify the person’s identity; and 3) Determine
whether the person appears on any known or suspected terrorist
or terrorist organization lists maintained by the U.S. government.
About Informative Research
Informative Research is a privately held information provider,
servicing the mortgage lending industry since 1946. Informative
Research was founded to provide research services aimed
at reducing the risk faced by the banking and lending community.
During its 56-year history, IR has evolved into one of the
nation’s recognized leaders for full service mortgage
information services, distinguished by its implementation
of technology and its Commitment to Customer Excellence
(C2E), which emphasizes extraordinary relationships with
the lenders, brokers, and agents involved in the loan process.
For further information regarding the benefits of working
with Informative Research, please contact us at 714-638-2855,
or visit http://www.informativeresearch.com.
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All brand names, trademarks, or registered trademarks are
the property of their respective holders.
Press Contact:
Sarah Ross
Informative Research
714-638-2855, ext 221
sarahr@informativeresearch.com
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