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Name screening software for Trust and Company Service Providers (TCSPs) in the UAE is a compliance platform that helps screen legal entities, directors, shareholders, UBOs, and nominee principals against the UNSC Consolidated List, UAE Local Terrorist List, PEP databases, and adverse media.
The software helps in screening at onboarding and performs rescreening, while producing time-stamped, inspection-ready records for Ministry of Economy and Tourism (MoET) compliance.
TCSPs manage complex corporate structures that often contain multiple jurisdictions and involve numerous related parties. A robust name screening solution helps in screening directors, nominee principals, or offshore ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) and not just the clients, helps in managing the compliance risks and maintains inspection-ready records to support MoET inspections.
Name screening software supports TCSPs’ compliance teams by automating screening across entity-level and party-level at every tier, nominee principal, daily rescreening, ensuring alert management and supporting regulatory review.
The Corporate Entity
The legal entity itself should be screened against sanctions lists using its registered name, trading name, and known aliases.
Directors
All directors of the entity should be screened individually, including nominee directors, where nominee arrangements exist, the principal behind the nominee should also be screened.
Shareholders
All shareholders must be screened, if a shareholder is a corporate entity, screening should continue through its ownership chain to identify the individual behind it.
Ultimate beneficial owners
Every ultimate beneficial owner with 25 per cent or more ownership or control at any tier of the ownership structure should be screened. Multi-layered structures require screening at every level.
Nominee principals
A nominee director or nominee shareholder is not the beneficial owner by virtue of the nominee holding [Cabinet Resolution No. 134 of 2025, Article 1]. The beneficial owner is therefore an independent screening subject and should be screened alongside the nominee. A nominee director or nominee shareholder must disclose their capacity and the beneficial owner’s identity to the company, and notify any change within 15 working days [Cabinet Resolution No. 134 of 2025, Article 39], which is the source a TCSP should be capturing into the screening record.
Name screening software helps TCSPs comply with anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) regulations through automated sanctions and other watchlist screening, identifying high-risk individuals, and managing compliance risks.
The table below outlines how name screening software helps TCSPs to comply with screening obligations in the UAE:
Screening Requirement | Sector Challenge | Name Screening Feature | Evidence Generated |
Entity screening | Screening the legal entity name and aliases | Entity-level screening with registered name, trading name, alias matching | Entity screening record, match results, timestamps |
Director screening | Screening all directors including nominees | Individual screening on all directors at onboarding and ongoing | Director screening records, PEP hits, alert notes |
Shareholder screening | Screening all shareholders including corporate shareholders | Individual and entity screening on all shareholders | Shareholder screening records, match results |
UBO screening at every tier | Screening UBOs through unlimited ownership tiers | UBO screening linked to multi-tier ownership map | UBO screening records per tier, match results |
PEP screening | Identifying PEPs across all parties in the structure | PEP database screening on all individuals and entities | PEP match results, EDD trigger, review history |
Daily rescreening | Catching new listings at any party in the structure | Automated daily rescreening of all structure parties | Rescreening logs, new hit alerts, timestamps |
The key red flags that name screening software can help detect are as follows:
The key essential features of name screening software for TCSPs in the UAE are as follows:
The software should screen the legal entity itself, including its registered name, trading name, previous names, and known aliases, not just the individuals associated with it.
The screening should extend to every individual and legal entity within the ownership structure, at every tier. The screening result must be linked to the relevant ownership level and relationship, providing complete structural visibility rather than a flat list of matches.
The software should include a dedicated workflow to identify, capture, and screen the beneficial principal behind every nominee arrangement within the corporate structure.
The software should be able to perform PEP and adverse media screening on every individual and entity across all ownership tiers and not just on the primary client.
The software should automatically rescreen every entity and individual within all active clients’ structures on a daily basis, ensuring continuous monitoring against the evolving risk.
Corporate structures administered by TCSPs manage entities and individuals across multiple jurisdictions with names in Arabic, Cyrillic, or other scripts. The screening software must handle multi-script matching and cross-jurisdictional transliteration capabilities to improve accuracy.
The screening results should be time-stamped and linked to the relevant client structure and individual party, enabling fast retrieval of audit-ready evidence during Ministry of Economy and Tourism inspections. Screening records form part of the customer due diligence and ongoing monitoring file and must be retained for not less than five years, calculated from the most recent of the end of the business relationship, the completion of a supervisory inspection, the completion of an investigation, or a final court judgment [Cabinet Resolution No. 134 of 2025, Article 25(2)].
Checklist to evaluate whether a name screening solution meets the compliance and operational requirements of UAE TCSPs:
Citadel365 helps TCSPs in the UAE through its name screening software, which screens the legal entities, directors, shareholders, UBOs, and nominee principals against the UNSC Consolidated List, UAE Local Terrorist List, PEP databases, and adverse media.
Citadel365 helps in delivering time-stamped, inspection-ready reports to comply with MoET regulations.
Citadel365 helps company formation agents, registered office providers, company secretarial firms, trust administrators, and registered agents in the UAE.
Effective name screening goes beyond the client. TCSPs should screen the legal entity, directors, shareholders, UBOs at every ownership tier, and nominee principals at onboarding and through continuous rescreening to minimise compliance gaps and remain MoET inspection-ready.
Citadel365 helps UAE TCSPs in automating screening, with rescreening, time-stamped audit trails, and regulatory-ready evidence.
TCSPs in the UAE must screen the legal entity, directors, shareholders, UBOs, at every ownership tier, and nominee principals.
Entity-level screening is the screening of the legal entity itself, using its registered name, trading name, former names, and known aliases, rather than only the individuals attached to it. It matters for TCSPs because a corporate shareholder or an intermediate holding company can be designated in its own right, so a structure screened only at director and UBO level would miss it.
The screening evidence MoET expects at a TCSP inspection includes time-stamped screening records, match investigations, audit trails, and exportable compliance reports.
Vasantha holds a Master’s in Law specialising in Banking Laws and Anti-Money Laundering and is CAMS and CGSS certified. With over 35 years of experience, she has worked closely with regulators and international financial institutions, building financial crime risk frameworks, sanctions monitoring programmes, and compliance systems across multiple jurisdictions.
