London and New York – 14th May, 2008, - ACE Software Solutions (www.acesw.com), provider of intelligent payment, AML and STP solutions for the financial sector today announced the latest version of OFAC Guard addresses an advanced solution for the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) regulations SR VII. The OFAC Guard can be used standalone or integrated with other ACE solutions and ensures more effective AML and message filtering for originating, intermediary and beneficiary banks.

Worldwide regulations aimed at intercepting and stopping the flow of terrorist funds is placing an increasing burden on many banks. However, many filtering systems lack the flexibility and intelligence to deal with the most recent compliance and reporting regulations, for example FATF Special Recommendation VII which aims to ensure that basic information on the originator of wire transfers is present and immediately available.

OFAC Guard intelligently recognizes the contents of a payments message to verify the originator information is both meaningful and accurate. It checks all mandatory fields are present and meaningful whilst validating the information like the address, city and the country information. The OFAC Guard also automatically checks the accuracy of name and address of the originator or the beneficiary against the banks own customer information file if available, using natural language processing techniques. Any discrepancies such as missing meaningful information or identification of inaccurate data are immediately flagged and reported for further investigation.

OFAC Guard’s rule based flexibility means it can also check payment messages to identify if they are international or cross border ACH transactions using natural language processing techniques on free format and address fields and intelligently apply different processing, scanning and formatting rules.

"The latest version of OFAC Guard is a response to customer feedback which indicated a clear need for solutions that met the latest FATF and NACHA regulations whilst providing a more intuitive watchlist filtering solution,” said ACE Software Solutions CEO Parth Desai, “ACE’s advanced technology ensures that banks can minimise reputational risk and avoid financial risk through the efficient and effective filtering of suspicious transactions."