Central Bank of the Philippines reminds supervised institutions to embed negative media screening in customer due diligence and transaction monitoring

The Central Bank of the Philippines issued a memorandum reminding all BSP-supervised financial institutions to treat Negative Media Report (NMR) screening as an integral part of Customer Due Diligence (CDD), complementing ongoing transaction monitoring, to identify and respond to potential money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing risks. Institutions are expected to update their institutional risk assessments for newly identified threats and emerging trends, keep an updated list of NMR sources and maintain a database of individuals and entities subject of adverse reports, and apply NMR screening at onboarding and ongoing “scrubbing” in transaction monitoring. Screening should extend to ultimate beneficial owners and authorised signatories of juridical customers, as well as related parties and counterparties for material and significant transactions, with firms defining these thresholds in a board-aligned NMR handling framework. Depending on investigation outcomes and true positive matches, actions may include enhanced monitoring and transaction lookbacks, risk-based account management measures up to relationship termination, and filing suspicious transaction and risk event reports where warranted, supported by management information systems that escalate significant NMR-related risks and other AML/CTPF matters to the board and senior management.