“The solution screens and re-screens our records on a daily basis to ensure total compliance. We are very satisfied with Visual Compliance’s ability to handle large volumes and return the results right away.”
DIRECTOR OF COMPLIANCE, CRUISE LINE INDUSTRY
Trade chain partners and intermediaries—freight forwarders, customs brokers, trucking companies, airlines, ships, warehouse and storage facilities, consignees, agents, sub-contractors—all pose significant compliance risks to the companies they serve.
There has been no abatement in the governments focus on anti-money laundering and export controls as the prime non-military means of protecting the interests of the United States and its allies against the threats of terrorism, trafficking, nuclear proliferation, and hostile regimes.
Freight forwarders and other supply chain intermediaries need to invest in trade compliance solutions that protect against committing violations for which the penalties—fines, loss of export privileges, higher costs and customer-losing shipment delays—can be catastrophic. In this increasingly competitive market, they also need to be able to offer these trade compliance solutions to enhance or differentiate their customer service offerings.
Continuous screening of trade chain partners
Pressing trade compliance issues include determining if you and your customer can legally do business with consignee, ship to and purchaser entities. Whether the goods require export licenses from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) or the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) on account of ECCN classification or USML category, or whether there are applicable license exceptions. And whether the destination is subject to Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions and embargos.
Purpose-built solutions
Some systems are not as effective or efficient as they could be, requiring multiple steps to screen a single shipment. Others generate too many false positives and create significant human resource burdens, or are difficult to learn and use. Some do not adequately integrate with or provide audit trails to other corporate technologies involved in trade compliance mitigation. Others do not provide fully current and comprehensive regulatory content against which to screen. Most importantly however, many do not provide a full range of deployment options that include Internet-based, batch and multiple technology integrations and are thereby severely limited for the 24/7 world of logistics.