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Using Passfort

Passfort’s false positive reduction service

When you’re running a check for a PEPs, sanctions, or adverse media screening, you have the option to use Passfort’s false positive reduction service.

When you apply false positive reduction, any results that match your filtering criteria are displayed in the Ignored matches list rather than the Potential matches list. The reason why the match has been ignored is displayed after the match.

The Ignored matches list is used to help filter noise. Users can view it at any time and confirm its results as true matches.

Ignored matches list

Configuration changes are made at the data provider level, so you can choose different settings for each data provider instance.

Some data providers also offer additional services to filter out false positives. If you’re using one of these services, false positives identified by your data provider aren’t displayed in Passfort. Contact your data provider for more information about how they determine false positives and where you can see them.

Filtering options for false positive reduction

Three factors can be used to filter data provider results for individual profiles:

  • Name of individual

  • Date of birth

  • Country of nationality

Three factors can be used to filter data provider match results for company profiles:

  • Name of company

  • Date of incorporation

  • Country of incorporation

For each of the previous factors, you can choose one of these filtering options:

  • Allow any matches: When selected, Passfort does not consider the factor at all when filtering false positives.

  • Allow exact matches: When selected, if the result’s factor is not an exact match to the profile, the result is displayed on the Ignored matches list. For example, if this option is selected for the Name of individual factor and the profile’s name is ‘Nayab Ali Khan,’ a result named ‘Nayab Khan’ is listed as an ignored match because the two names do not match exactly.

  • Allow close or exact matches: If two or more results with this option selected are not close matches or exact matches to the profile, the result is displayed on the Ignored matches list. For example, if this option is selected for the Name of individual factor and the Date of birth factor and the profile’s name is "Nayab Ali Khan" and the date of birth is "07/10/1980":

    • A result named "Nayaab Khana" with the date of birth "07/10/1980" is listed as a potential match because one factor, the date of birth, is an exact match.

    • A result named "Nayaab Khana" with the date of birth "10/07/1980" is listed as a potential match because one factor, the date of birth, is a close match.

    • A result named "Nayaab Khana" with the date of birth "07/10/1985" is listed as an ignored match because neither factors are close or exact matches.

Close matches

Close matches are as follows for the factors for individual profiles:

  • Name of individual: Any name with a fuzzy match value of 80% or more is considered a close match. Any name with a fuzzy match value that’s less than 80% is not a match and may contribute to a false positive.

  • Date of birth: Any date of birth that’s less than one year, or 365 days, away from the profile’s date of birth or only has a single-digit difference, for example, 07/12/1980 instead of 07/10/1980, or no digit differences is considered a close match. A date of birth that is more than one year off, but does not have any other digit differences, will not contribute to a false positive; for example, 07/10/1981 is one year away from 07/10/1980 but is otherwise correct. Likewise, a date of birth that has a single-digit difference, but is less than one year off, will not contribute to a false positive; for example, 07/12/1980 is one digit away from 07/10/1980 but is not a year off.

  • Country of nationality: Any country of nationality that matches the profile’s country of nationality is considered a close match. Any country that’s not exactly the profile’s country of nationality is not considered a close match and may contribute to a false positive.

Close matches are as follows for the factors for company profiles:

  • Name of company: Any name with a fuzzy match value of 80% or more is considered a close match. Any name with a fuzzy match value that’s less than 80% is not a match and may contribute to a false positive.

  • Date of incorporation: Any date of incorporation that’s less than 1 year, or 365 days, away from the profile’s date of incorporation or only has a single-digit difference is considered a close match. A date of incorporation that is more than 1 year off, but does not have any other digit differences, will not contribute to a false positive. Likewise, a date of incorporation that has a single-digit difference, but is less than one year off, will not contribute to a false positive.

  • Country of incorporation: Any country of incorporation that matches the profile’s country of incorporation is considered a close match. Any country that’s not exactly the profile’s country of incorporation is not considered a close match and may contribute to a false positive.

Passfort does the matching based on the information sent by the data provider. For example, if the data provider only returns the year an individual was born, the month and day of birth are not used to match the date of birth.