Country-specific characters in file checks: How to configure the character set

When screening your business partners against restricted party lists in Trade Compliance Management, you have the option to define the character set before the screening. This can be important if country-specific characters are used in the check addresses.

In German, for example, this applies to: “ß”. However, there are also numerous non-Latin characters in addresses of business partners located in Asia.

Defining the character set of the check file

In Trade Compliance Management, the default character set is ISO-8859-1. You can change this under Compliance Screening in the File check by clicking New to start a new file check. Use the linked Check settings text to define the character set. Change the character set:

Generally, Trade Compliance Management includes the European “CFSP” restricted party list and the British “HM Treasury List”. There, addresses are maintained mainly in Latin characters.

To ensure that Trade Compliance Management can read your check file correctly, select the character set used to generate the check file in advance in the check settings. Use the arrow on the right to define the character set format, for example UTF-8. The UTF-8 character set is useful for creating check files if the addresses contain non-Latin characters.

• If the character set of the check file does not match the character set defined in Trade Compliance Management, the result of the check is not conclusive.

Example: If a check file is created with the UTF-8 character set and the ISO 8859-1 character set is selected in Trade Compliance Management, for example, “0xF6” is recognized as part of the name instead of “ö”. This falsifies the check result.

To avoid these errors, it may be advisable to check a transliterated (e.g. ä > ae) variant for the checked addresses as well. For a detailed analysis of your matches, Trade Compliance Management offers you an analysis mode. Use this if you want to get more in-depth information about a match.

Checking non-Latin characters

In principle, the address check integrated in Trade Compliance Management can also handle Asian or Cyrillic characters. They are not considered special characters. The prerequisite however is that an authority provides its restricted party addresses in these characters. Experience shows that the authorities in the EU or in the USA maintain the relevant lists mainly in Latin characters and add the names for individual entries in Asian, Cyrillic, or other characters. Since the relevant restricted party lists predominantly contain restricted party list entries in Latin characters, you should maintain your business contacts in Latin characters for screening.

• Run a format check for your files in advance with the character set you have chosen.