United International Management (Malta) Limited – forms part of United Group a corporate services provider with headquarters in the Netherlands, boasting nine branches, worldwide – has been active in providing financial, legal and compliance solutions to companies based on the island, who are facing stiff regulations, particularly in the anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) sphere.
United’s office in Malta extends this offering to the island. “Our business in Malta has grown steadily over the years, and what I’ve noticed is that the kind of business we do is shifting. Compliance and AML/CFT issues are costing our clients more and more time and effort, and United is responding to their needs with increasingly sophisticated IT solutions,” Managing Director, Mihai Cheregi, says.
The globalised nature of today’s economy has created a landscape in which businesses and individuals with high net-worth have to address an increasing number of legislative requirements in order to be compliant while, at the same time, managing the growth of their assets. Indeed, clients in the financial sector have to comply with ever-complex Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) legislation, while, in other industries, companies are being pushed to prevent reputational damage by thinking ahead and obtaining the best intelligence on potential clients and partners.
Addressing these challenges are at the heart of what United specialises in, by offering a bespoke service featuring the full range of financial, legal and AML/CFT compliance solutions, to its international clientele of 3,000+ Fortune 500 companies, investment industry players, and high-net worth individuals.
To this end, the firm boasts innovative digital solutions for its customers – including an AI powered compliance platform called Pascal. Mr Cheregi, who has been with United since it was founded in 2008, heading the Malta office since 2013, underscores the power of IT solutions in addressing its clients’ AML/CFT commitments.
“United was introduced in 2018 to a young company called Vartion, who had built a search engine powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). They were subsequently developing a tool around that search engine that could help companies in and beyond the financial sector with compliance screening of their customers and business partners. They called it Pascal. United agreed to test it and contributed to its development as a launching customer,” he says.
But, how does it work? Pascal is an AI tool, which can read and understand like a human, but in a zillionth of the time. It analyses Big Data, sanctions lists, PEP lists, company data in corporate registers and general news (recognising adverse media coverage) in order to draw out the most pertinent information useful to United’s clients, retaining the most relevant results, while discarding any false positives. “It discovers patterns in the data, and alerts and reports all hits, along with an indication of risk and sentiment, through a very user-friendly interface. Turning masses of data into actionable insights in a matter of seconds,” the Managing Director explains.
This powerful AI tool, however, is continually evolving, with additional features added every day and with an increasing amount of proprietary data - scraped from public media and tagged, containing millions of articles in multiple languages, including data leaks from the Panama Papers to the FinCen Files — added to the system. “In functionality, it is now a fully-fledged compliance support platform allowing one-time checks as well as 24/7 monitoring and facilitating internal teamwork by producing an audit trail of all searches performed,” Mr Cheregi.
“United has benefited immensely already from using Pascal in its own compliance processes,” Mr Cheregi says. “It has significantly speeded up our screening of clients and business partners and keeps us informed whenever an adverse change in their situation occurs. And our staff find it very easy to use. But its real significance for us is as a tool to help our clients achieve the same benefits. It has become a key component of the AML/CFT compliance services we offer.”
Looking ahead, Mr Cheregi sees a spate of opportunities in the Maltese market. “Financial and legal services are a mainstay of Malta’s economy, so AML/CFT compliance is a big issue here. As a team, we’re hoping to help many existing and new clients upgrade their compliance processes and lighten their AML/CFT compliance risks.”
To support the business community in general, as well as to increase the effectiveness of sanctions, Vartion has decided to offer the sanctions screening module of Pascal free of charge to any party who wants to be sure they are not violating sanctions.
Pascal can be used with confidence, safe in the knowledge that the privacy of the data is just as important to us as it is to everyone. Vartion exceeds the industry standard when it comes to protecting any organisation. This is reflected by its ISAE 3402 type II certification and assurance statement, provided by a big four audit firm.
For further information, readers can visit United and Pascal’s websites:
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