Risk is weighing heavy on the minds of CEOs this year, according to the PWC annual global survey of business leaders. While PWC anticipates that "Digitization, an important lifeline for businesses during the pandemic, will probably be the engine for a return to health growth," the survey results also highlight that CEOs expect “somewhat” or “significantly increased” risk across a widening array of concerns.

Not surprisingly, compliance risk made the list with more than half (55%) of respondents indicating that risks related to the regulatory landscape are on the rise. But third-party & supplier management risk was even more worrying for 57% of respondents. What’s more, concerns related to Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) considerations led the way for 65% of the CEOs, highlighting how increased pressure from investors and consumers has influenced organizations in recent years. 

With reputations, financial stability, and growth strategies at stake, having an efficient process for third party due diligence and ongoing monitoring is critical. For many organizations, particularly those in financial services and other highly regulated industries, one area ripe for optimization is undertaking adverse news checks. That’s where the new Nexis® Entity Search API delivers real value. Connecting you to 60,000 global print, broadcast and web news sources, this API also takes advantage of fuzzy name matching and risk-aligned pre- and post-search filters used within our due diligence solution, Nexis Diligence. But the benefits don’t stop there.

1.    Calibrate search parameters to enhance the relevance of adverse new checks

With news being generated around the clock, the volume of data available is intimidating, to say the least. Because the Nexis Entity Search API leverages the same search parameters set up in your Nexis Diligence subscription, you can easily refine and test your search to help narrow the focus to what matters most to your organization. Use the default adverse news terms or customize keywords to reflect your unique interests.

Does your organization have operations in the EU? Then you may want to add keywords associated with human rights due diligence. Multinational legal firm, Paul Hastings LLP, notes that “Even before the COVID-19 crisis, many observers were predicting that mandatory human rights due diligence laws—requiring companies to identify, mitigate and report on salient human rights risks—would sweep Europe.“ Such laws have already been enacted in France and the Netherlands, with formal proposals in several other nations. On the heels of the pandemic, which highlighted disparities in worker rights and other forms of human rights abuses, it seems likely that the pressure will continue to grow.

The flexibility to hone keywords to changing needs ensures that your adverse news checks remain relevant over time, whether your organization wants to orient those checks to support routine KYC due diligence, track ESG factors, or maintain a big picture view of emerging risk, be it regulatory, reputational, financial, or strategic in nature.

2.    Accelerate adverse news checks with data calls set to your risk concerns and preferred schedule

Once you’ve tested and refined the search query to suit your organizations needs, your developers can set up the API to make ad hoc or high-volume data calls, shortening the time it takes to run adverse news checks on dozens, hundreds or even thousands of third parties. Onboarding due diligence, monthly monitoring, periodic data pulls—you’re in control.

Instead of manually entering an individual or entity name to conduct a search, you can establish data calls on a regular cadence for individuals or entities of interest. Results are returned on screen in HTML format for easy viewing. Choose to have results exported in PDF or DOCX format. You can also configure the PDF or DOCX reports to display a research summary and order the articles returned by content type, as you see fit.

3.    Conduct additional due diligence checks with searches across non-news content sets

The Nexis Entity Search API supports more than adverse news checks.  Other Diligence content sets can now be searched, using the parameters that you’ve already defined in your Nexis Diligence preferences.  In addition to valuable company sources like Dun & Bradstreet® Ultimate Beneficial Ownership and ESG Ratings, you can use the Nexis Entity Search API to search across other relevant data sets including sanctions and watchlists, PEPs, biographical references, and legal sources.*

* Due to publisher restrictions, some Nexis Diligence content is excluded from API access. Experian and CreditSafe credit data, WorldCompliance PEPs data and Public Records are NOT available via the API.

4.    Free up human resources for higher value tasks while maintaining an ongoing view of potential risk

In addition to providing an audit trail of the due diligence being undertaken, the PDF or DOCX files can also be shared with decision makers or added to a supply risk management or CRM system to provide useful background information for other teams across the business. You can also review PDF or DOCX files from high-volume searches using a shared directory or using a third-party tool. One multinational financial services organization has already found that use of the Nexis Entity Search API in combination with a third-party risk analysis solution has reduced the time spent on manual due diligence from 20 minutes per individual or entity to 1-2 minutes.

Want to extract deeper insights? You can run the reports through in-house natural language processing and analytics applications. And when it comes to successfully mitigating risk, time is of the essence. Reducing the time spent on manual due diligence—especially when it comes to the tremendous volume of news generated daily—means that your risk specialists can focus on analyzing, quantifying, and responding to potential threats. And that can mean the difference between proactively mitigating risk instead of pivoting to damage control when unseen threats appear.

Explore the possibilities. Learn more about the new Nexis Entity Search API today.