PRODUCT NEWS
CLEAR: Tools Aimed at Two New Targets
by Barbara Brynko
Decision makers in an agency or enterprise realize the value of quality competitive intelligence. Getting the right information at the right time can mean the difference between establishing a successful business relationship and succumbing to fraud.
And that’s a big difference, says Andy Russell, vice president of fraud prevention and investigations at Thomson Reuters. When Thomson Reuters created the CLEAR product line about 4 years ago, it was targeted at government and law enforcement market investigations, and then it moved into the corporate market 2 years later, he says.
The two latest additions are CLEAR for Government Fraud and CLEAR for Enhanced Due Diligence, both of which are designed to provide a deeper dive into critical information needed to ensure a thorough, quality investigation before any deals are signed.
CLEAR for Government Fraud, which can be integrated with Westlaw for legal research, offers users a “tremendous savings in time and in dollar amount within the government space,” says Russell. Designed for healthcare fraud investigators and contract managers, the product lets users access a database that offers information about business data, news, and business and company family trees. This is the data that government procurement officers and investigators rely on when evaluating vendors and possible business partners and when investigating actual cases of fraud. “With the economy the way it is, people have tried to take advantage of the stimulus money and other programs,” he says. “Identifying those fraudsters up front offers tremendous financial savings for government agencies.”
Likewise, CLEAR for Enhanced Due Diligence steps up the investigation for due diligence and security markets in the enterprise in cases of money laundering. With the product, customers can use one dashboard to drill into information about people and businesses to reveal underlying connections and potential risks instead of searching through myriad sources.
Both of the new CLEAR products include web analytics and filtering capabilities that can also be applied to global business, news data, and publicly available social networks to uncover negative sentiments about a person or business.
Alerts were another big asset for customers, says Russell, that can notify users about any “change in the business or corporate office or other type of sanction activity.” The comprehensive algorithms in the CLEAR portfolio tie the sources together with identifiers that provide matches between the different entities, he says.
Russell says Thomson Reuters “takes pride in listening to customer feedback and trying to incorporate those concerns into new versions of our products”; he notes that more enhancements and features will be added to the CLEAR portfolio in the coming months.
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