Pegasystems Inc. announced enhancements to Pega Smart Investigate making it easier for banks to manage financial sanction investigations. For the first time, banks can now automate the process directly from their Swift-based exceptions management software with out-of-the-box workflows – saving investigators valuable time while reducing the risk of errors and non-compliance. Pegasystems Inc., the low-code platform provider that builds agility into the world's leading organizations, announced enhancements to Pega Smart Investigate making it easier for banks to manage financial sanction investigations.

For the first time, banks can now automate the process directly from their Swift-based exceptions management software with out-of-the-box workflows – saving investigators valuable time while reducing the risk of errors and non-compliance. Recent world geopolitical events have led to an increase in economic sanctions, which aim to block transactions linked to illegal activities such as terrorism, drug trade, or human rights violations. Enforcement of these sanctions largely falls on financial institutions, which are now burdened with a significant rise in new cases.

These complex investigations typically take place over email, phone, and other free-form channels outside of the bank's core exceptions platform. This not only lengthens the time to resolution, it can also result in costly manual errors and make compliance tracking more difficult. Pega Smart Investigate is the only payment exceptions solution on the market that provides pre-built Swift-based workflows to facilitate more efficient information requests for financial sanctions investigations.

Pega Faster resolutions: With intuitive authoring, dynamic templates, and enhanced inbound request processing, Pega can help reduce resolution time from weeks to days. Fewer manual errors: Pega automates many aspects of the investigation process, helping banks avoid mistakes that can result in significant fines. Increased compliance: By keeping the process and data gathering within the core exceptions software, banks can more easily audit the process with a documentation trail to meet compliance standards.

In addition to the new sanctions investigation processes, Pega has introduced additional features to Pega Smart Investigate to drive further efficiencies, including: Event visualizer: This new feature helps payment investigation specialists easily digest key events in the payment lifecycle in a single view to quickly understand underlying transaction issues. Regional and domestic payment exceptions: Traditionally used to investigate cross-border payments, banks can now extend Pega Smart Investigate's support for ISO messaging to regional and domestic payment schemes as well. Accessibility enhancements: Expanding the use of descriptive icons, legends, user interface navigation, and accessible colors further aid users who require accessibility adjustments.