In the context of increasingly stringent requirements for business transparency, companies increasingly need to not just formally check their counterparties, but also understand with whom exactly they are building business relationships. Identification of clients and counterparties is becoming an important part of risk management, internal control, and business protection systems.

In a real-case scenario, this raises a number of questions: what information needs to be verified, how to identify beneficial owners, where to look for information on PEPs, sanctions restrictions, and other risk factors. Inconsistency of the sources and the need to compare large volumes of data significantly complicate such work and increase the likelihood of missing important information.

Identification of companies within the framework of the Law No. 115-FZ is a mandatory procedure for organizations working with clients and funds. The main goal is to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. Despite the formal nature of the requirements, actually we are talking about a basic check: with whom exactly the business is being conducted and what risks this may entail.

The requirements of the Law No. 115-FZ apply not only to banks. The obligation to identify clients has been established for a wide range of organizations, including:

In other words, if a company is involved in financial transactions or could potentially be used to conduct questionable transactions, it is subject to compliance control requirements.

Identification is not only a collection of basic company details such as name, TIN and address. As a rule, it involves a deeper check, including several key areas.

1. Beneficial Owners Check
It is important to establish who ultimately controls the company and benefits from its activities. These may be individuals who directly or indirectly own shares in the business or exercise a decisive influence on decision-making.

2. Identification of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs)
It is necessary to determine whether the owners, executives or other related persons are classified as politically exposed persons or are among their close relatives. Such individuals are considered to be in a high-risk category and are therefore subject to increased scrutiny.

3. Screening Against Sanctions Lists
The company, its owners and executives must be checked for inclusion on sanctions lists. Working with such counterparties can lead to serious legal, financial and operational consequences.

4. Assessment of Business Reputation and Risk Factors
In addition, companies analyze the presence of negative information, litigation, signs of bankruptcy, as well as other factors that may indicate the unreliability of a counterparty.

Together, this type of verification allows for a more complete understanding of a client or counterparty and reduces the likelihood of making risky decisions.

Compliance with the requirements of the Law No. 115-FZ is under constant government control, primarily by Rosfinmonitoring (Federal Financial Monitoring Service). This body performs financial intelligence functions and coordinates the system of combating money laundering and terrorist financing.

Entities subject to the law are required to:

In particular, if entities refuse to provide services to a client due to identified risks, the relevant information may also be transferred to Rosfinmonitoring. This creates a unified data exchange system that allows for the identification and tracking of potentially risky transactions and market participants.

At first glance, the requirements may be perceived as a formality, but in practice they are aimed at protecting the company itself. Verification of clients and counterparties allows you to:

Having a well-established compliance control system is becoming an essential element of sustainable and responsible business operations.

Failure to comply with the Law No. 115-FZ may result in serious consequences. Among them:

In some cases, violations may have more serious legal consequences if they involve participation in illegal activities.

In practice, compliance with the requirements of the Law No. 115-FZ is associated with a number of difficulties. There are no unified and comprehensive registers of politically exposed persons available to the public, sanctions lists are fragmented, and assessing business reputation and risk factors requires analyzing information from a large number of sources. As a result, companies are forced to collect, collate, and verify information themselves, which increases labor costs and creates the risk of missing important data.

Therefore, many subjects of the Law No. 115-FZ use specialized solutions. One of such solution is Globas.

Globas provides a set of tools for verifying and identifying clients and counterparties as part of compliance control:

1. Beneficial Owners Check
Globas helps to build an ownership structure and identify the ultimate owners of a company, including in the presence of complex corporate relationships.

2. Identification of Politically Exposed Persons
Globas implements verification of affiliation with Russian and foreign politically exposed persons. The system uses an extensive database, which allows you to identify such signs without manually searching through multiple sources.

3. Screening Against Sanctions Lists
The system enables automated verification against key sanctions lists, reducing the risk of interacting with contractors subject to restrictions.

4. Assessment of Risks and Business Reputation
Globas helps identify unreliability factors, analyze risks, and form a more holistic picture of the company, its owners, and associated parties.

Thus, using Globas brings an automation of a significant portion of compliance procedures, reduces the workload on employees, and improves the quality of client and counterparty verification.

Under the conditions of reorientation of foreign economic relations to the East and South, Russian business increasingly contracts with companies from China, India, Turkey and the UAE. However, working with new jurisdictions also carries new risks: differences in reporting standards, non-transparency of ownership structures, legal and enforcement proceedings, as well as sanctioned counterparty and its owners. Analysis of a foreign company in such a situation becomes a critical element of the transaction.

When working with foreign counterparties, it is important to take into account that the level of transparency of financial data varies significantly depending on the jurisdiction.

In a number of countries, financial statements are publicly available and can be obtained relatively quickly. In other jurisdictions, access to data is limited and obtaining information requires additional inquiries and analysis.

This means that:

When analyzing a foreign company, it is important not only to obtain financial statements, but also to interpret them correctly.

Key indicators:

When checking a foreign counterparty, it is important to use basic financial ratios.

Financial statements allow to identify typical signs of troubled companies.

Such signals require additional check and adjustment of the terms of the transaction.

One of the common mistakes is the analysis of the last reporting period only.

In fact:

Financial analysis allows you to:

At the same time, in some cases (China, the UAE), financial information is limited - then it is necessary to use additional sources and verification tools.

Manual analysis of foreign companies requires:

In fact, this takes considerable time and does not always give a complete result.

The Information and Analytical system Globas provides comprehensive check of foreign companies, allowing you to compensate for the lack of open data, reduce risks in international activities and minimize the need for manual collection and analysis of information from various sources.

In the context of growing international cooperation, it is especially important to quickly obtain reliable information about foreign counterparties.

A new service is available in Globas, which allows you to find foreign companies in no time and receive structured information on them.

The service provides access to the database of more than 380 million companies from 220+ countries and territories, which allows checking counterparties in almost any jurisdiction.

Depending on the country and availability of sources, the report may include:

The scope and details of information depend on the jurisdiction, legal form, lifetime of the company and the specifics of data disclosure.