Fin-Scan Expands Global Reach with New German Office

PITTSBURGH and MANHEIM, Germany, Feb. 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Fin-Scan GmbH, a member of the Innovative Group headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA announced the opening of its office in Manheim, Germany and its hosting facility in Frankfurt.  The new facilities were developed to provide services to Fin-Scan's rapidly growing European client base, and they complement the Group's other facilities in Pittsburgh, Cayman Islands, Canada, and London, UK.  Fin-Scan is a German registered company offering clients the protection of German data privacy laws.

The Innovative Group has been serving Europe's leading financial and insurance institutions, gaming organizations, charities, and other industries for more than 25 years.  Client concerns regarding customer privacy drove the decision to open the new facility in Frankfurt, where clients are provided the protection of German rules and regulations.

With the new data center, European clients have the option of secure Software as a Service (SaaS), or "hosted," processing for the Innovative Group's five business lines: Data Quality, Master Data Management (MDM), Data Discovery and Profiling, Address Validation, and, especially, customer-focused sanctions and Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) list screening to meet the requirements of the Third EU Directive.

"Facing government compliance mandates, many European firms are interested in a proven solution that offers ease of implementation and is cost-effective," explained Michael Ott, Innovative's senior vice president.  "Our Fin-Scan Hosted PEP and sanctions screening solution has been used by clients since 1998 and utilizes best practices developed over years of experience.  Clients can now choose from any of our sites to transmit their data.  They can license solutions or use the Internet to reach secure servers to match their customers against their preferred sanctions or PEP database, using matching parameters they define.  All suspect 'hits' are returned to them in a case management tool for review."

Clients are able to tune Innovative's software to meet their definition of quality.  Innovative's professional services group assists in the set up process so that production can be done on demand and data is returned in the matter specified by the client.  Compared to the traditional model of licensing and operating software solutions in-house, Innovative's hosted processing significantly reduces the client's investment as well as the ongoing demands on their internal personnel and hardware resources.

"We're very pleased to provide our European clients with the added service and security offered by our Frankfurt data center," said Bob Colonna, Innovative Group's president and CEO. "Having a secure data center in Germany protected by EU data privacy laws enables us to offer European organizations the valuable option of hosted processing to meet their data quality and PEP screening needs."

About the Innovative Group

The Innovative Group is a global leader in the development and delivery of high-performance enterprise data management solutions to organizations whose success depends on a complete and accurate understanding of their customers. The Company's offerings include software and services for Data Quality; advanced Data Discovery and Data Management; Address Validation and Geocoding for mainframe and open systems; MDM; Data Governance; Sanctions and PEP List Screening, CIP/KYC programs, and document verification; and specific-purpose business support applications to reduce credit losses, identify better prospects, improve customer service, better align service channels to customer value and more.

Since 1968, the Innovative Group has set the standard for designing and managing customer-centric projects, having created thousands of customer databases utilizing the firm's data models, consulting services, and data quality software.

The Innovative Group has its global headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, EMEA headquarters in London, additional sites in Germany, Canada, and the Cayman Islands, and representatives in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, the Netherlands, Norway, and South Africa. Its software supports Windows, UNIX, and IBM operating systems. Its screens can easily be adapted to any language, and its software supports Unicode. Innovative's cloud-based solutions are used in more than 40 countries and process over eleven billion customer records annually.  www.innovativesystems.com.

About Fin-Scan
Fin-Scan helps organizations of all sizes comply with the anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism mandates of the 3rd EU Directive and other UK and international regulations by providing powerful, yet cost-effective, solutions for screening any volume of records – from several million to individual ad hoc checks. Utilizing the world-class data quality and data matching capabilities that are the cornerstone of all Innovative products and services, Fin-Scan facilitates the efficient and accurate screening of large volumes of records with very precise, user configurable rules for flagging suspicious records. It integrates smoothly with all third-party PEP databases, facilitates client onboarding, provides lists and 24/7/365 list management services, and helps ensure the accuracy and validity of SWIFT and other payment transaction processing. Fin-Scan's flexible delivery options include licensed or Software as a Service (including web services), desktop, and appliance.  www.finscan.com.