Global lists
Watchlist Screening Across Seven Official Sanctions Lists
Watchlist screening compares the names of customers, vendors and counterparties with official lists of people and organizations you must not deal with. OfacScanner screens against the OFAC lists on every plan and adds the UN, EU, UK, Canadian and Australian sanctions lists on Growth and higher.
What is watchlist screening
A watchlist is any list of people, organizations, vessels or aircraft that a business should flag before it trades with them. The most important watchlists are government sanctions lists. They are legally binding, they come with asset freezes and trade bans, and they are published by agencies such as OFAC in the United States, the UN Security Council and the European Commission.
Watchlist screening is the routine of checking your parties against those lists, at onboarding, before payments and shipments, and again whenever the lists change. The goal is simple. Find the rare true match fast, clear the many look alike names quickly and keep proof of both.
The term is used loosely in the market. Some vendors include politically exposed persons, adverse media or law enforcement lists under the same word. OfacScanner focuses on official sanctions lists, which are the lists with legal force behind them, and says clearly what it covers.
The sanctions lists we screen
Seven official lists, each with the date of the version currently in use. The source files are checked every 30 minutes.
OFAC SDN
Office of Foreign Assets Control, U.S. Department of the Treasury
Published Oct 9, 2026, 19,416 entries
Every plan
OFAC Consolidated
Office of Foreign Assets Control, U.S. Department of the Treasury
Published Sep 14, 2026, 481 entries
Every plan
UN Consolidated
United Nations Security Council
Published Oct 10, 2026, 1,010 entries
Growth, Scale and Enterprise
EU Consolidated
European Commission
Published Sep 22, 2026, 6,241 entries
Growth, Scale and Enterprise
UK Sanctions List
UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
Published Oct 8, 2026, 6,406 entries
Growth, Scale and Enterprise
Canada SEMA
Global Affairs Canada
Published Oct 1, 2026, 5,707 entries
Growth, Scale and Enterprise
Australia DFAT
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Published Oct 7, 2026, 4,009 entries
Growth, Scale and Enterprise
Who publishes each list and who it binds
Which lists you need depends on where you are based, where you trade and which currency you use.
| List | Published by | Who usually screens it |
|---|---|---|
| OFAC SDN list | U.S. Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control | U.S. persons and anyone dealing in U.S. dollars |
| OFAC consolidated list | U.S. Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control | The same group, for sectoral and other non-SDN measures |
| UN sanctions list | UN Security Council | Businesses in UN member states that apply UN measures |
| EU sanctions list | European Commission | EU companies and anyone doing business in the EU |
| UK sanctions list | UK government, FCDO and OFSI | UK companies and UK persons anywhere |
| Canada sanctions list | Global Affairs Canada | Canadian companies and Canadians abroad |
| Australia sanctions list | DFAT | Australian companies and Australians abroad |
A company with customers or payments in several regions usually screens all of the lists that apply to any part of the business.
One search, every list, one rating
Searching seven government websites one by one means seven spellings, seven result formats and seven screenshots. With watchlist screening in OfacScanner you type the name once. Every enabled list is searched with the same matching, and the result shows which list each candidate comes from.
The same person often appears on several lists with slightly different spellings. Matching handles aliases, word order, legal suffixes and transliteration from Cyrillic, Arabic, Persian and Chinese, so those variants still meet. The score blends spelling, sound and word order into one number from 0 to 100.
- One rating per name, with the list behind each candidate
- Date of birth, country and identifiers to separate namesakes
- Evidence record with the version of every list used
Internal blocklists on Enterprise
Many companies keep their own list of parties they will not serve, such as past fraud cases or terminated accounts. Enterprise lets you screen against it with the same engine.
Upload your own list
Add names and identifiers from your internal blocklist and keep it next to the official lists.
Same fuzzy matching
Your list gets aliases, transliteration and scoring exactly like the government lists.
Same review flow
A hit on your own list opens a case, so one team reviews every kind of match in one place.
Kept private to your workspace
An internal list is visible only to your workspace and is never shared with other customers.
What watchlist screening here does not include
OfacScanner screens official sanctions lists and your own uploaded lists. It does not screen politically exposed persons, known as PEPs, which are public officials and their close family and associates who carry higher corruption risk. It also does not scan adverse media, meaning negative news about a customer. If your risk assessment calls for PEP or adverse media checks, run them as a separate control in your onboarding process. Results here support your decisions, and OfacScanner is not affiliated with OFAC or any other list publisher.
Watchlist screening questions
Another question? Write to [email protected].
Is watchlist screening the same as sanctions screening?
Do I need lists beyond OFAC?
How current are the lists?
Do you screen PEP lists or adverse media?
Which plan includes the global lists?
Keep exploring
Screen your first name in seconds
Type a person or company name, see the risk rating and top candidates from the current OFAC list, and keep the evidence when you sign up.
Results support your compliance decisions, and the final decision stays with your team. OfacScanner is not affiliated with OFAC or the U.S. Department of the Treasury.