A Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) check involves searching trusted global enforcement sources and open sources across the web to establish whether an individual is listed as a politically exposed person. This check serves the purpose of ensuring compliance with anti-money laundering regulations and assists in the identification of high-risk candidates in relation to the potential for financial corruption.

PEP checks are often run to fulfill anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) obligations, and to generally mitigate risk. Your AML and KYC obligations may vary depending on your industry, compliance standards, and/or applicable laws and regulations.

Note: The Politically Exposed Persons check is one of several check types which comprised Softcheck in Certn's legacy system.

In this article

Order this check

To order a Politically Exposed Persons check from CertnCentric you must have the applicant’s email address. For more information on ordering checks through CertnCentric, see the Order checks Certn Help article.

Turnaround time for this check

On average, Certn’s Politically Exposed Persons checks are complete within 60 seconds of an applicant submitting their information.

US-based applicants may be subject to a manual review which takes an average of 24 hours to complete.

Stages of this check

Politically Exposed Persons checks ordered through CertnCentric go through the following stages:

1. Order

You place an order that includes a Politically Exposed Persons check.

2. Application

The applicant receives an email invitation to complete the case that includes a Politically Exposed Persons check.

3. Processing

Certn processes the check using the information supplied by the applicant.

4. Results

The check's results become available to you in CertnCentric and to the applicant.

Applicant experience

When you order a Politically Exposed Persons check your applicant receives an email inviting them to complete an online form for the included checks. Through this process, an applicant will supply Certn with their:

consent and authorization to run the check,
full name (including previous names and aliases),
date of birth,
address details and when they started living there, as well as
address details of the position for which they are applying (includes options for no specific address and remote work).

Next steps

After you've placed your order and Certn has received the required details from your applicant, the check begins processing.

You can view the case and check results in CertnCentric. Learn more in our Manage your cases Certn Help article.

To learn more about this check’s results and what happens if the applicant can’t complete the check, see our Politically Exposed Persons checks results Certn Help article.