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We offer use of our API for all Subscribers. This covers our ratings table and there is no extra cost for Subscribers. We also offer APIs that cover all of the information and data available within our Subscription area. This is usually available either for commercial clients (onboarding platforms etc.) or for those clients who want to incorporate our information and data into their global kyc systems.

For further information re costs, time frames etc., please <a href="https://www.knowyourcountry.com/contact" rel="noopener">Contact us</a>.

Geographical AML risk is an integral part of any risk assessment when onboarding or reviewing customers. Due diligence providers, screening tools and onboarding platforms recognize the benefit of being able to provide geographical risk assessments as a part of their reporting on customer risk assessments.

Therefore, through our API, we have arrangements with a number of service providers who have integrated our data/information into their product.

Should you like to speak further on this, please contact us.

Our Country Ratings tool is a composite index, meaning it provides a simplified comparison of countries risks of ML/TF based on a number of relevant data sources.

Each country's risk score is calculated from those data sources and does not represent any opinion of KnowYourCountry except where data is unavailable and we have taken a subjective view dependent upon the other levels of risk for that particular country.

The scores summarize a complex and multi-dimensional issue, and it is meant to be used only as a guide when assessing Country ML/TF risk. For a more thorough understanding of where exactly the risks lie, or to verify overall scores, users should look at the Country AML profiles/reports provided in our website and Subscription area, or visit the data source websites for further information.

We are always looking to improve our services and welcome all feedback, positive or negative - just let us know through our Contact form.

All information and data is gathered from International or Government agencies and therefore subject to their accuracy. These include: -

CIA Factbook
EU Council
FATF
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Global Initiative
Global Terrorism
IMF
OECD
OFAC
The Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units
Transparency International
US Department of State
United Nations
World Bank Group
Various Regulatory authorities from around the world

Our Country profiles are available to all visitors to our open access area. They provide an overview of the AML risk posed by jurisdictions.

Our Enhanced Country reports are available in our Subscription area or may be downloaded on an ad hoc basis (for a fee of US$125.00) from our open access area. These reports contain government and regulatory sourced information that provides a much more extensive and detailed understanding of all the risk elements identified by FATF and other Regulators that require assessment when evaluating jurisdictional AML risk.

Each Enhanced report also contains its own risk dashboard that sets out the risk scores for those elements based upon our methodologies and the data set that lies behind our country ratings score.

All of our content is derived from government agency or regulatory sources. Our job is simply to collate this information and provide it to you in a manageable report.

Should you have any issues with regard to the content then please contact the government agency or regulatory body directly, although we would appreciate being kept informed so that we may make any changes or updates that may be necessary in a timely fashion.

Currently we do not provide that function. We would suggest that you copy, save or print any reports that you need.

All subscribers to our Subscription area will receive notifications of updates to the Country Profiles or Country Ratings table, unless they choose not to. Currently notifications are sent within 2 days of the event being updated in our Subscription Area.

We update our Country summaries and Country Ratings table on an event-by-event basis with, after undertaking our checking processes, all changes being published within a few days of the event.

All updates can be found in our Updates page.

Subscribers will receive notifications of all updates (currently on a weekly basis)

There are many benefits for using KnowYourCountry. For instance, KnowYourCountry: -

helps your organization comply with local anti-money laundering and FATFguidelines in assessing country risk
helps you organization be aware of evolving country risk
saves you time by having all information in one place
provides the information you need to make country AML risk assessments
provides easy to read country by country reports in a concise and manageable form
is simple and easy to use

The simple answer is any type of business that falls within the regulated sector is required to conform with local AML requirements. Because of the move to customer assessment on a risk-based approach, geographical, and industry or product sector, risk assessment is an integral part of any customer assessment. Types of businesses that normally are subject to AML regulation are: -

Financial sector firms, including banks, building societies and other credit institutions&nbsp;
Individuals and firms engaged in regulated investment activities under the Financial Services and Markets Act
Issuers of electronic money
Companies dealing in long-term life insurance
Currency exchanges, check encashment centers, and money transmission services (money service businesses)
Auditors, insolvency practitioners, external accountants and tax advisers
Trust and company service providers
Casinos; Art market participants
Crypto asset exchange provider
Custodian wallet providers
Estate agents/Realtors and certain letting agents
Independent legal professionals, when undertaking relevant business

The reports are intended to be used by anyone working in the finance industry but specifically for: -

Country Risk assessment requirements for internal policies and procedures
Country Risk assessment for take-on of new business
Country Risk assessment for annual/periodic review processes for ongoing business
Country Risk assessment for third party vendors/suppliers
For use by any person dealing with foreign clients/cross-border transactions during the course of their work
Providing an audit trail with regard to assessing geographical risk
Compliance procedures
Training your employees to better understand their clients and their client's business and the risks posed by them
Business development

We have risk rated the information in our Country Risk Ratings table in order to simplify the overview of the information available, however, these risk ratings are subjective, based upon the information available, and should only be used as a guide or a starting point when undertaking your country risk assessments.

We do not give any opinions or advice on the data/information that is available in our Country Profiles or Ratings table.

Safelink provides the secure data room platform that our Subscription system is hosted on.

For further information regarding SafeLink, please go to their home website, <a href="https://safelinkhub.com/" rel="noopener">https://safelinkhub.com/

We offer 3 Subscription Plans -

Professional
Professional Plus (single user)
Professional Plus (2-5 users)

For further information, please visit our Products page https://pricing.knowyourcountry.com/products

We offer free Subscription to all Regulators, Government Agencies, Non Profit Organizations and Educational facilities although we reserve the right to maintain discretion in this regard and, from time to time, may refuse a request based on our internal policies. Email addresses of any user applying for complimentary access will have to be associated with the NPO.

Further information may be requested concerning the NPO prior to authorizing a free Subscription.

Normally we do not offer trial access. However, we can arrange a demo to show you what is available in the Subscription area and answer any questions that you may have. If you'd like to arrange a demo, please use our booking form.

Currently we do not offer that function. We would suggest that you copy, save or print any ratings tables that you need.

Our enhanced country reports contain government and regulatory sourced information that provides a much more extensive and detailed understanding of all the risk elements identified by FATF and other Regulators that require assessment when evaluating jurisdictional AML risk.

Each report also contains its own risk dashboard that sets out the risk scores for those elements based upon our methodologies and the data set that lies behind our country ratings score.

For Country Reports

Go to the Country report that you want to download.
Scroll down to the 'Actions' section in the right-hand side of the report
Click on 'Download Report'
A page will open wherein you can override the rating band that we have set and include your reasoning behind any override that you may choose.
Then click on the sections of the report that you want included.
Then click on download.
This process usually takes a few seconds. Should you have any issues downloading your report, please contact us

For Country and Industry Reports

Go to the Country report that you want to download.
Scroll down to the 'Actions' section in the right-hand side of the report
Click on 'Download Country and Industry Report'
A page will open wherein you can override the rating band that we have set and include your reasoning behind any override that you may choose.
Then click on the sections of the report that you want included.
Then choose the Industry sector from the dropdown list.
Then click on download.
This process usually takes a few seconds. Should you have any issues downloading your report, please contact us.

We do not currently have a translation tool for our reports. However, should you need to translate a downloaded pdf report there are a number of tools available.

A free online tool to use is Google Translate, which, although it may not deliver fully accurate translations of business terminology, and it can throw up some formatting issues.

The scoring methodology for the FATF MER recommendations is dependent upon a number of criteria:
a) whether the jurisdiction has been evaluated in the old or new style evaluation methodology
b) scoring on effectiveness; technical compliance ratings (new style MERs)
c) scoring on recommendation compliance ratings
Further information can be found in our [Methodologies page](https://www.knowyourcountry.com/methodologies-sources/)

The FATF MER Spreadsheet is updated within a few days of any MERs or Follow-up MERs being published.

The FATF MER (Mutual Evaluation Report) Recommendation Assessment spreadsheet is a record of the FATF 11 Effectiveness Recommendations Assessments (Immediate Outcomes) and 40 Technical Recommendation Assessments (as per the 2013 Methodology for assessing technical compliance with the FATF Recommendations and the effectiveness of AML/CFT systems).

Besides being a major factor when assessing Country Risk, the Recommendation Assessments can also be used to determine whether a country may be deemed to be equivalent (where financial institutions are permitted to rely on third-party financial institutions and DNFBPs to perform elements (a)-(c) of the CDD measures set out in Recommendation 10 (identification of the customer);
identification of the beneficial owner; and
understanding the nature of the business) or to introduce business.

Although the 2013 Methodology recommends that the assessments of Recommendations 10 and 11 should be taken into consideration when determining equivalence, later evaluations have suggested that these may well be extended to include Immediate Outcome Recommendations 3 and 4, together with other Technical Compliance Recommendations, including 12,13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 26.

Our Premium Subscription area contains 245 Country webpages full of enhanced content that can be used to satisfy AML directives and guidelines with regard to evaluating jurisdictional AML risk on a case-by-case basis. You can then build reports quickly and easily from each webpage, choosing the information that is relevant to your requirements.

You will also have full access to the FATF Mutual Evaluation Report Recommendation Scoring Spreadsheet together with our Data Spreadsheet, which is the basis of the Country Ratings Table and can be amended to reflect your organization's risk appetite and local expertise.
We have also introduced an Industry Sector Risk section.
What is available in our Premium Subscription area
Enhanced Country AML Risk Profiles
Customizable Data Spreadsheet that is the source for Country Ratings Table
FATF Mutual Evaluation Recommendation Assessment Spreadsheet
Industry/Product Sector AML risk information
API access to Country Ratings Table

For further information on what is available please open our
If you'd like further information, please Contact us and we'll get back to you. Alternatively, you can book a call/demo with us through our Calendar.

We offer two types of Report for downloading, which are downloadable in pdf format: -

Country- This is limited to the Country report that is available in the Member's area (a fee is payable by all non-Subscribers).
Country and Industry - This is a report that combines the Country and Industry sector reports that are available in the Member's area.

We currently cover 40 Industry and Product Sectors, ranging from Agriculture to Wealth Management.
The Industry/Product Sector information we provide is generic in that it does not cover risk on a country-by-country basis. We have used information available in the below-mentioned Guidelines for the presented information: -

EBA - Final Guidelines on Risk Factors
FATF - Specific Risk Factors in the Laundering of Proceeds of Corruption - Assistance to reporting institutions
High Risk/Cash Intensive NAICS Industries
Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the council on the assessment of the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing affecting the internal market and relating to cross-border activities
Wolfsberg Group

In order to understand the actual AML risk posed by any Industry/Sector, we have rated four risk areas: -

Money Laundering
Terrorism Financing
Corruption, and
Sanctions&nbsp;

Please note that any information provided by us should be only used as a guide. Any risk assessment that you make regarding any Industry/Product sector should be properly considered and documented.

Yes. The refund will be calculated on a pro rata basis depending upon the time left on the license at date of cancellation. Normally we would not offer any refund within three months of notice of cancellation. Any bank charges and or currency exchange losses will be met by the user.

We will raise our invoice after access has been granted to you.

Once a member is granted access to our Subscription area, an email will be sent to the email address of the user with the activation link within a couple of hours. When you click on the activation link, you will be sent to the KnowYourCountry Subscription signing in page.

If the email with the activation link is not received, please check your spam box as, occasionally, the email will be blocked by your internal security. If you do not receive the email and it is not in your spam box, please Contact us.

Yes, any time you would like to assign the email address of one user to another, please just confirm to us the email address of the assignor and the assignee and we will arrange.

We update our Country profiles and Country Ratings table on an event by event basis with, after undertaking our checking processes, all changes being published within a few days of the event. All updates can be found in our Updates page. Subscribers will receive notifications of all updates (currently on a weekly basis).

To customize your own Country Ratings table: -

Decide the weightings for each risk factor (these should add up to 100)
Decide your scoring values
Update the Weightings and scoring values in the spreadsheet (only the blue boxes should be changed). Please note that the Weightings total (cell E2) should total 100
Document your reasoning behind the changes
Please note that your customized ratings table will not automatically update and you will have to manually reset your changes at each update.

We have covered all the major risk factors identified by international regulators with regard to the consideration and assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing risk on a country-by-country basis.

To arrive at our final weighting calculation, we have tried to find a fair and balanced formula that covers all the risk factors. This is an exercise that has evolved over the last few years as factors such as Human Trafficking have become important areas of risk to cover.

Scoring values are determined upon our view of the level of risk posed by any issue within a Risk factor.

The difficulty with regard to determining weightings for each of the risk factors is that our Subscribers, both geographically and according to their area of business, will have different requirements when assessing country risk, which is why, in our Subscription area we have introduced the Country risk rating tool that will allow you to create your own country ratings dependent upon your business requirements, expertise and risk appetite. Therefore, although we have tried to set weightings and scorings that reflect risk for all users, we would stress that although based on our experience of providing a Country AML ratings table for several years these weightings are subjective and should be used as a guide only.

We have therefore set our weightings to reflect the importance of FATF, the international regulator, with regard to the measure of the effectiveness of Country AML regimes in their financial markets, particularly the FATF AML Deficiency list, which is a list recognized internationally.

Recommendation assessments arising from FATF style Mutual Evaluation exercises are also weighted higher than other risk factors as these provide an assessment of the countermeasures in place, and effectiveness of those countermeasures, against money laundering covering the criminal justice system and law enforcement, the financial system and its regulation, and international co-operation.

We use the following sources for our ratings table: -

Sanction regimes information (UN, US, EU, UK, Canada, Arab League, and others)
FATF AML Deficiency list
FATF Mutual Evaluation Recommendation assessments
US State Department Supporters of Terrorism
Global Terrorism Index
Transparency and World Bank Corruption Indexes
Global Initiative Organised Crime (Criminal Markets, Criminal Actors, and Resilience)
EU Tax Blacklist
Offshore Finance Centres (Eurostat, CORPNET research group, and the US State Department INCSR)

For further information on weightings, scoring values etc., please go to our Methodologies page

We hope that you never have to file a complaint about our service however, if you do, please use our Contact form and we will get back to you within 48 hours.

Please be advised that any complaints will be thoroughly investigated.

We have been notified that scammers have been sending an email regarding Crypto Tracking under the directive of FATF, enclosing an invoice with our name and logo requesting for payment of service.

The email originates from the email address: compliance.knowyourcountry@proton.me Please note this is a scam and should be ignored.

From time to time a report will not download or you will receive a message that the download is 'Queued'. In these circumstances please wait a few minutes and retry. If the issue persists, please contact us using our Contact form and explain the problem. If possible, please attach a screen print of the message.

Please always check your Spam box for any downloads that you have not received in your In box.

All Subscribers have unlimited access to our data spreadsheet and FATF MER recommendation assessment spreadsheet.

Our spreadsheets are created in Excel, so these will download and open if you have Excel installed.

Occasionally, your organization may have a firewall installed that stops the spreadsheet being downloaded to the device you are using.

If this is the case, please ask your IT department to unblock the spreadsheet

If you see an error in one of our reports, please let us know. You should confirm the country and a brief outline of the error.

We appreciate getting the heads up on any data or information that might be erroneous.

Please note that most of our content is taken directly from Government Agency or Regulator sources.

All Subscribers will receive notifications of updates to our Ratings table and/or Reports unless they confirm otherwise.

Should you not be receiving notifications please let us know through our Contact form.

If your password is not being recognized, please try the following steps:

check that the user name (email address) is that of the licensed user
check that your license has not expired
Reset your password.

If you are still having issues, please contact Support team and let them know of your issue.