How is the annual unscreened payment figure calculated?

The tool multiplies your monthly cross-border payment volume by 12 to get an annual figure, then applies the unscreened share. If you screen 80% of payments, 20% are unscreened, and that percentage applied to annual volume gives the unscreened count. The calculation uses the share you enter directly, so the accuracy of your output depends on the accuracy of that input.

Does 100% customer coverage mean I only need to screen at onboarding?

No. Onboarding screening establishes a baseline, but sanctions lists are updated continuously. A customer who was not a sanctions match at onboarding can become one following a new designation. Most regulators and auditors expect periodic re-screening of existing customers, particularly for higher-risk segments, in addition to onboarding checks.

What counts as a cross-border payment for this calculation?

Any payment with a foreign nexus is typically in scope, including outbound wire transfers, inbound remittances, foreign currency transactions, and payments routed through foreign correspondent banks. Domestic payments processed entirely within one jurisdiction may carry lower sanctions risk, though this depends on your regulatory perimeter and the nature of your counterparties.

What are the limitations of this calculator?

The tool produces an estimate based on the numbers you provide. It does not account for the quality of your screening, such as match rate accuracy, list coverage, or name-matching logic. A program that screens 100% of customers against a poorly maintained list or with a permissive fuzzy-match threshold may still carry significant exposure. Coverage percentage is a necessary condition for a sound program, not a sufficient one.

Can I use this output in a regulatory filing or audit response?

The output is a self-assessment tool intended for internal planning and gap analysis. It is not an audit-grade figure and should not be submitted to regulators as a verified compliance metric. For formal assessments, you would need to pull figures from your core systems and have them reviewed by your compliance team or an independent auditor.

What should I do if my unscreened customer count is large?

Start by identifying which segments account for the gap. Legacy accounts, recently onboarded customers in a new market, or customers processed through a non-integrated channel are common sources. Prioritize high-risk segments first, such as customers in higher-risk jurisdictions or those with higher transaction volumes, and build a remediation schedule that documents your progress over time.

Sanctions Screening Coverage Calculator

Estimate gaps in your sanctions screening coverage across customers and payments.

Calculations run entirely in your browser. Nothing is submitted.

The Sanctions Screening Coverage Calculator estimates how many of your customers and cross-border payments fall outside your current screening program. It quantifies unscreened population and annual payment volume in plain numbers, giving compliance teams a concrete starting point for gap analysis and remediation planning.

How to Use the Sanctions Screening Coverage Calculator

The calculator takes four inputs. Start with your total customer count and the number currently passing through your sanctions screening workflow. Then enter your monthly cross-border payment volume and the percentage of those payments that are screened.

A few notes on getting accurate inputs:

Total customers should reflect your full onboarded base, not just active users. Dormant accounts still carry exposure.
Customers currently screened means those screened against a sanctions list within your defined cycle, whether that is at onboarding, periodically, or both.
Cross-border payments per month should include all transactions with a foreign nexus, including outbound wires, inbound remittances, and payments routed through correspondent banks.
Share of payments screened is the percentage of those cross-border transactions that pass through your screening engine before or at settlement.

If you are unsure of an exact figure, use a conservative estimate. The point is to surface the order of magnitude of your gap, not produce an audit-grade number.

Once you submit, the tool returns your unscreened customer count, your customer screening coverage percentage, and the estimated number of unscreened payments over a full year.

What the Result Means

The two output numbers tell different stories.

Your customer coverage percentage reflects how much of your relationship base has been checked against a sanctions list. A gap here means you may have existing customers whose status has never been verified, or whose verification predates recent list updates. A customer who was clean at onboarding three years ago may not be clean today.

Your annual unscreened payment volume translates a percentage gap into an absolute count. A screening rate of 90% sounds high. On 500,000 monthly payments, that is 600,000 unscreened transactions per year. Framing it as a raw number makes the exposure concrete and communicable to senior leadership or a regulator.

Neither number is a compliance score. They are diagnostic inputs. A high unscreened count does not automatically mean a violation has occurred. It means you have population you cannot account for, and that is the starting point for a remediation conversation.

If your customer gap is zero and your payment coverage is 100%, verify those inputs carefully before concluding your program is complete. Gaps often appear in places that are not tracked, such as legacy accounts migrated from an acquired entity, or payments processed through a non-integrated channel.

Why This Matters for Compliance Teams

Sanctions screening is not a best-efforts program. Regulators, particularly in the United States under the OFAC framework, apply strict liability to sanctions violations. The intent of the payment or relationship does not determine liability; the fact of the transaction does. That makes coverage completeness a binary requirement in principle, even when it is difficult to achieve in practice.

For MLROs and compliance officers, the calculator serves several practical purposes.

First, it supports internal risk assessments. Before you can remediate a gap, you need to size it. A rough quantification of unscreened population is more useful in a board risk report than a qualitative statement that coverage is "generally good."

Second, it helps prioritize remediation effort. If your customer gap is large but your payment gap is small, you may need to focus on periodic re-screening programs before targeting payment-level controls. The two numbers point toward different workstreams.

Third, it creates a baseline for tracking improvement. Run the calculation now, implement changes, run it again. A documented trajectory of improving coverage is a meaningful indicator of program maturity, even if you have not reached 100%.

Platforms like FluxForce can help automate the screening workflows that close these gaps, but the first step is understanding where your gaps are. That is what the calculator is designed to do.

Close the gap with FluxForce

FluxForce AI agents cut false positives, clear alert backlogs, and produce evidence-backed decisions with full audit trails, so the numbers above move in the right direction.

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