US sanctions screening and global sanctions compliance are not the same thing.
OFAC screening (checking a name against the US Treasury SDN list) is the baseline requirement for organisations with US dollar exposure. But a counterparty can be absent from the SDN list and still be designated under EU sanctions, UK financial sanctions, Australian DFAT designations, or UN Security Council resolutions.
For Australian financial institutions, fund managers, and businesses with cross-border exposure, the relevant question is not "is this entity on the OFAC list?" It is "is this entity on any of the lists that apply to our jurisdictional exposure?"
Answering that question by running five separate screens against five separate lists, each with its own update cadence, data format, and matching logic, is a fragmentation problem that most compliance teams solve badly or do not solve at all.
What the five lists cover and why they differ
US Treasury OFAC SDN List. 19,152 entries covering individuals, entities, vessels, and aircraft designated under US sanctions programs. The broadest single-jurisdiction list by volume and the one with the most significant extraterritorial reach. US secondary sanctions mean non-US entities can face consequences for transacting with SDN-listed parties even without a US nexus.
UN Security Council Consolidated List. Approximately 1,000 entries designated under UN Security Council resolutions, primarily covering terrorism, weapons proliferation, and specific country regimes. UN designations are the international baseline. Member states are obliged to implement them, but the list is smaller than bilateral lists and updates infrequently compared to OFAC.
EU Financial Sanctions Files. Approximately 5,994 entries under EU sanctions regulations. EU sanctions frequently diverge from US sanctions, particularly in relation to Russia, Iran, and Belarus designations. An entity present on the EU list and absent from OFAC is not uncommon following divergent policy decisions.
UK OFSI Financial Sanctions. Approximately 5,135 entries maintained by the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation. Post-Brexit, UK sanctions are implemented independently of EU sanctions. The lists share many entries but diverge increasingly as each jurisdiction makes independent designation decisions. For Australian firms with UK correspondent banking relationships or UK-connected transactions, OFSI compliance is separately relevant.
Australian DFAT Consolidated Sanctions List. Australia's autonomous sanctions list, maintained by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade under the Autonomous Sanctions Act 2011. DFAT designations cover Russia, Belarus, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other regimes, and are separately maintained from UN, US, EU, and UK lists. Australian financial institutions and exporters face Australian law obligations, not just US or EU ones.
No single list is a superset of the others. Gaps between lists are real and matter for compliance.
The five-screen problem
Without a consolidated screening API, checking a name against all five lists requires five separate processes. Each list has its own download location, update schedule, and data format. The matching logic needs to be applied separately to each. The results need to be consolidated manually. And the audit trail needs to capture all five screens, not just the one that returned a result.
In practice this means compliance teams either maintain five separate list integrations, a significant ongoing engineering burden, or they pay for a commercial sanctions database that consolidates the lists but often cannot tell you exactly which version of each list was used for a given screen or when it was last updated.
The audit trail problem is the one that creates examination findings. "We screen against all relevant sanctions lists" is not the same as "here is a log entry showing the specific lists screened, the list versions used, and the result returned, for this specific counterparty on this specific date."
What the Tech Compass Multi-Jurisdiction Sanctions API provides
A single screen call checks a name simultaneously against all five lists and returns a consolidated result.
The response includes the overall match status (clear or matched), the matched entries with full detail, and the specific jurisdiction and list that triggered each match. If a name matches on the EU list and the UK list but not OFAC, that is clearly attributed in the response. If it matches on all five, all five matches are returned with source detail.
Every call generates an audit log entry covering all five lists in a single record: the name screened, the version of each list used at the time of the screen, the consolidated result, the per-list results, the timestamp, and a request ID. One log entry. Five lists. Complete audit trail.
The data lineage block on each response includes the source reference and last-updated timestamp for each list individually, so your compliance team can confirm the currency of each list at the time of any given screen.
One current limitation to note: the Australian DFAT list is experiencing a temporary ingestion issue due to a GCP IP block. DFAT screens are documented as unavailable until this is resolved, and the API response flags this explicitly so you know the screen was incomplete. A fix is in progress. All other four lists are screening normally.
Who needs multi-jurisdiction screening
The single-list assumption breaks down quickly for any organisation with cross-border exposure. Australian financial institutions with EU correspondent banks, importers and exporters with international supply chains, fund managers with global portfolios, and fintech platforms serving customers across multiple jurisdictions all have compliance obligations that extend beyond OFAC alone.
The consolidation question is also relevant for organisations that are currently OFAC-only and are expanding their geographic exposure or correspondent banking relationships. Adding a second or third jurisdiction to an existing compliance program is significantly easier when the underlying data infrastructure already supports it.
Pricing and access
Free tier covers 10,000 calls per month with no credit card required. Professional plan is USD 1,500 per month and includes all five lists, daily refresh for dynamic lists, full audit logging, and compliance pack.
Documentation is at api.techcompass.com.au/docs. The compliance pack includes source references and licensing documentation for all five lists and a pre-filled vendor questionnaire response.
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Free tier covers 10,000 calls per month. No credit card required.
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