Daily Compliance Brief — Sanctions Screening Data Quality Remains a Supervisory Focus

February 10, 2026

Signal

Supervisory communications over the past 24 hours continued to reinforce concerns around sanctions screening effectiveness driven by underlying data quality, update latency, and reference source governance. Authorities reiterated that screening outcomes are only as reliable as the timeliness and completeness of the data feeding them.

Particular attention has been placed on how firms manage list updates, name matching logic, and escalation thresholds when designation information changes. Supervisors signalled limited tolerance for manual workarounds or delayed implementation of sanctions updates in higher-risk environments.

Why it matters

For compliance teams, this sustains pressure to demonstrate robust governance over sanctions data ingestion, validation, and change management. Weak controls in these areas can directly increase exposure to missed or delayed identification of designated persons.

Institutions should reassess controls around list update frequency, reconciliation processes, and oversight of third-party screening tools to ensure sanctions risk is managed in line with supervisory expectations and evolving threat profiles.