One of the eight finalists in the Rise of the Rest competition is WorldWatch Plus, a know-your-customer (KYC) and global risk screening service offered by International Screening Solutions. It provides users with a self-serve interface delivering compliant background screening and due diligence searches.
Target clients are companies that are required to know who they do business with, known in the industry as KYC compliance. “We have customers in the consumer reporting agency, compliance monitoring, financial institutions, fraud monitoring, as well as IoT [Internet of Things],” explained Chuck Papageorgiou, founder and chief executive officer of International Screening Solutions.
Utilizing next-generation technology, products available through the WorldWatch Plus service are Global Watch Lists & Sanctions, Global Adverse Media, and Politically Exposed Persons.
Global Watch Lists & Sanctions offers subscribers accurate and up-to-date data that can be accessed to determine if a subject “has been listed as barred or received any type of censure by financial, criminal and/or regulatory authorities globally”.
Searching thousands of databases dating back to the early 1900s, the Global Adverse Media product gives subscribers the ability to perform enhanced due diligence on a person or business entity. It returns only relevant data based on a process that searches adverse keyword strings.
The Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) product searches 1200 sources with more than 4 million global records dating as far back as the 1700s to provide the history of persons of political interest. WorldWatch Plus has a support team of analysis experts dedicated to monitoring these global sources and ensuring the latest records are available.
WorldWatch Plus subscribers have access to features like continual monitoring, case management, custom source searching, and automatic translation and transliteration.
The identity screening data is 15 percent more accurate than information provided by credit bureaus, and the global sanctions and PEP screening is several times faster than common database products. The speed is a result of eliminating more false positives than any other comparable screening tool.
A new product within the WorldWatch Plus program will be addressed with the investment should it be won. “We have a new product idea for our platform that I have been working on for the last six months that needs more research and analysis before we can launch it as a product, that we have no development budget for it for 2019,” said
“If we win this, we’ll fund the project for this year and use the funds to put together a team of students from the UT Center for Entrepreneurship to finish the research.”
Papageorgiou understands Rise of the Rest is a unique moment for WorldWatch Plus. “I was excited [to be chosen to participate] because presenting our platform to a group of sophisticated investors like the one Steve Case assembled is a rare opportunity,” said Papageorgiou. He also feels a challenge with needing to present five years of WorldWatch Plus in less than four minutes.
To read more about the Tampa Rise of the Rest event and other business news in Tampa, register for free at 813area.
