How to enable CCH iFirm AML: Ongoing Monitoring for Individuals & Businesses

What is CCH iFirm Ongoing Monitoring?

CCH iFirm AML Ongoing Monitoring checks individuals and businesses on a daily basis for criteria such as Sanctions, PEPS, Adverse Media, Disqualified directors etc. to ensure the practice is aware of the risks of acting for that client

Activating Ongoing Monitoring for a Client

There are 2 ways in which you can activate ongoing monitoring for a client. You can activate Ongoing Monitoring at the point of running a AML Data, AML + Biometric KYC, KYB or IDV check by checking the box on the pop up, Or you can activate ongoing monitoring in bulk in the overview screen in CCH iFirm AML. We will cover both methods in this guide.

Note: Individual clients can only be activated if the name and date of birth have been entered into Central. You will get a warning message if this is not done when you try to activate this client for Ongoing Monitoring

Activating Ongoing Monitoring at the point of doing an AML check

This can be done as part of the AML check that is triggered from CCH Central by clicking the Ongoing Monitoring checkbox for an individual or for a company at the point of running an AML data, AML + Biometric KYC, IDV or KYB check.

After you have done this, the individual will show as “Active” on the overview screen in ongoing monitoring and as active in ongoing monitoring log page.

Activating clients in CCH iFirm AML

Alternatively the client can be activated directly in iFirm by clicking “inactive” alongside client name which will change the setting to active in the ongoing monitoring log. However this page will only show clients who have already been enrolled. If you want to enrol a new client into Ongoing Monitoring this can be done from the overview screen. As shown in screenshot below there is a separate tab to display individuals and businesses.

Activating clients in bulk from the overview screen.

There are 2 steps you need to follow in order to activate clients in bulk.

Firstly you must make sure that the client is in CCH iFirm. Any client you have interacted with will already have an entry in CCH iFirm. If your client is not in CCH iFirm, then see below on how to bulk upload clients into CCH iFirm. If the client is already in CCH iFirm, then you can skip this step.

Bulk Uploading clients to CCH iFirm

Firms can now perform a bulk upload of contacts/clients from the respective Find window to CCH iFirm.

On the Find Contact or Find Clients windows, select either a single record or multiple records of contacts and clients and click the Upload to CCH iFirm

A screenshot of a computer

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

A pop-up box is displayed, showing how many records have been selected. The number displayed automatically excludes the following:

Any records already uploaded (this can be found in the field chooser on the Find Contacts/Clients window)
All employee records
Any Supplier records

Once your clients are in iFirm, you can activate Ongoing Monitoring in bulk for them.

Bulk activating clients for Ongoing Monitoring

Multiple individual clients can be activated at same time from the overview screen by ticking the check box against each client and then clicking Activate Ongoing Monitoring button.

It will display a list of any clients that don't have a date of birth as these cannot be activated. To recitfy this add a DOB in CCH Central

Match Statuses in Ongoing Monitoring.

The match status column will either display as No match or Potential match. If Potential then click the three dots and you will then have the option of reviewing the match and marking it as a true positive or a false positive. There is also a view/add comments box available to ensure your decision has been documented for audit purposes.

It is possible that the system finds more than one potential match for your client in which case it will put the number next to potential match and all potential matches will need to be reviewed to check if any of them are your client.

Review Match

Clicking Review Match generates the Ongoing Monitoring Report below and enables you to review all the information generated by the 3rd party searches and decide firstly whether it is your client and assuming it is, what risk they pose to your business.

Next to the name or picture of the client, there will be one or more labels (e.g. PEP POI SAN etc). For an explanation of these labels click the View All drop down and select Report Key.

Where it can the report will provide relevant proof of each label often in the form of a URL.

True Positive

By clicking True Positive, you confirm you are acting on behalf of the individual who has been returned in ongoing monitoring. After the record has been made active within CCH iFirm AML, the Ongoing Monitoring tick box is ticked and a date is supplied as to when that record subscribed. Any reports associated with that record are downloaded and displayed here and in CCH Document Management (if that module is licenced)

False Positive

By clicking False Positive it means the individual returned by ongoing monitoring is not in fact your client. Once a client is marked as a false positive, This individual wont be returned as a potential match for that client again. If a new individual is matched to that client, then the system will return the status back to “potential match”

Overview Screen

By selecting Overview it will only display the result of the last AML check rather than showing results of all previous AML tests for each client. In addition it will display for each client whether ongoing monitoring is active and when the checks for AML and Ongoing Monitoring were last run.

Notification Engine

If there is a new match a warning will display and the review match button can be clicked directly from the notifications window. The notification engine will also display new AML checks that have been run.

In addition to notifications in the software mentioned above users who are licensed for Ongoing Monitoring will also receive an email concerning any clients where the Ongoing Monitoring check has been run resulting in new information.