Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the AML, compliance and FlowSentry terms used across the product and this Help Centre.
ForEveryone
This glossary explains the anti-money-laundering (AML) and compliance terms you will meet in FlowSentry, alongside the product's own vocabulary. Terms are listed alphabetically. Where a term names a screen or button, it appears in bold as it does in the product.
A to C
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Ad-hoc file analysis | Checking a statement or transaction list against your monitoring rules, statement analytics and screening lists without loading it into the transaction book. Only findings you promote become alerts. |
| AI draft | Text or analysis prepared by an AI assistant, labelled AI draft — advisory with a confidence. You review, edit, use or discard it; it is never submitted automatically. |
| Alert | A signal raised when activity meets a monitoring rule's conditions, or a promoted ad-hoc file finding. Alerts are claimed, investigated and closed with a coded reason, or grouped into a case. |
| AML/CFT | Anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism: the laws, controls and processes that detect and prevent both. |
| Approvals inbox | My approvals: one list of everything waiting for a second pair of eyes across every module, showing what you can approve. |
| Ask Sentry | FlowSentry's read-only AI copilot, available on every page. It answers questions about records you can see, with sources, and never acts. |
| Audit trail | The append-only, hash-chained record of who did what and when. It names the real person and makes tampering evident. |
| Backtest | Replaying stored transactions through a rule exactly as the live engine would, to project alert volume and estimate false positives before activation. |
| Beneficial owner (UBO) | The natural person who ultimately owns or controls a customer, directly or through layers of ownership, above the threshold set by your institution. |
| Case | A container for an investigation, grouping one or more alerts with transactions, parties, documents, notes and the suspicion and STR record. Stages run Triage, Investigation, Review, Closed. |
| CDD | Customer due diligence: identifying and verifying a customer, understanding the purpose of the relationship and monitoring it. |
| Clear proposed | A screening clear that needs a checker's approval, because the hit is on a statutory list or scores above your four-eyes threshold. |
| Command palette | The search-and-jump box opened with Ctrl+K (⌘K on a Mac) or /. Type a page, action or record reference and press Enter. |
| Cool-off | A period after a rule raises an alert during which it does not raise another for the same subject, to avoid duplicate alerts. |
| Coverage | In ad-hoc file analysis, how many rules could actually be evaluated on the file. Limited coverage means "no findings" is not a clean bill of health. |
| CRR | Customer risk rating: a score and band summarising a customer's money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk. |
| CTR | Cash transaction report: a report to the FIU of cash activity at or above the regulatory threshold (USD 15,000 equivalent under the FRC directive). |
D to K
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Data source | A connected system, such as core banking or mobile money, that sends records to FlowSentry with its own signing key. It starts in testing and goes live only after a second person approves. |
| Designation | The formal listing of a person or entity under sanctions, for example by the UN Security Council or under Kenya's domestic regime, which triggers asset freezes. |
| EDD | Enhanced due diligence: deeper checks, such as source of funds and wealth, for higher-risk customers. In FlowSentry, a case opens automatically when a customer's effective band is High. |
| EWRA | Enterprise-wide risk assessment: the institution's assessment of its own money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk, with a risk register and heatmap. |
| Exclusion | A "good-guy" exclusion: an approved record that a known customer is not a listed party, so screening skips that pair while it is in force (up to three years). |
| False positive | An alert or screening hit that, on review, does not indicate the risk it flagged. |
| FATF | The Financial Action Task Force, the international body that sets AML/CFT standards (the FATF Recommendations). |
| File run | A file loaded through Load data using an approved mapping template. Every row is accounted for: ingested, a duplicate, or quarantined. |
| FIU | Financial intelligence unit: the national body that receives suspicious transaction and other reports. In Kenya, this is the FRC. |
| Floor rule | A rule that sets a minimum risk band whatever the score, for example a domestic PEP is never below Medium. |
| Flyout | The panel that opens from an icon-rail module, listing its pages with one-line descriptions. You can pin it open. |
| Four-eyes | Another name for maker-checker: two different people involved in a regulated decision. |
| FRC | The Financial Reporting Centre, Kenya's financial intelligence unit. |
| goAML | The reporting system used by the FRC and many other FIUs. FlowSentry prepares and validates goAML XML files for upload to the portal. |
| KYC | Know your customer: collecting and verifying customer information as part of CDD. |
| Kill switch | A per-feature switch that turns a feature, such as AI features, off for your institution at once. Changes need a reason and step-up and are audited. |
L to P
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Layering | The stage of money laundering in which funds are moved through many transactions to obscure their origin. |
| Maker-checker | The control that one person proposes or prepares (maker) and a different person approves (checker). FlowSentry enforces it on the server. |
| Mapping template | A versioned set of rules that maps a source's fields to FlowSentry's standard data model. Only templates with an approved version can be used for file runs. |
| MLRO | Money Laundering Reporting Officer: the person responsible for deciding whether to file suspicious transaction reports. A Deputy MLRO acts as their checker. |
| Mule | An account or person used to receive and move illicit funds on behalf of others, often fed by many senders (fan-in). |
| Nil/positive certificate | The record produced when a domestic designation is activated and your book is rescreened, showing whether any match was found. Downloadable as CSV. |
| No-file register | The internal register of suspicions the MLRO decided not to file, with grounds. |
| Override | A governed change to a customer's risk band, with a reason and an expiry of up to one year, approved by a different person. The calculated score is still recorded. |
| Parameter | See threshold. |
| PEP | Politically exposed person: someone who holds or has held a prominent public function, and so carries higher risk. |
| Platform reference model | The uncalibrated risk model used to rate customers until your institution activates its own. |
| POCAMLA | Kenya's Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act, the main AML law, including reporting and seven-year record keeping. |
Q to S
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Quarantine | Holding something back until it is checked: rows that fail validation in a file run, list files that fail validation, and uploaded documents until they are scanned clean. |
| RCA | Relative or close associate of a PEP. Designating an RCA requires the related PEP. |
| Read model | Summary data prepared in the background for dashboards and analytics, refreshed about every 15 minutes, rather than reading live tables. |
| Risk band | The category a risk score falls into: Low, Medium, High or Very high. |
| Rule | A monitoring check that looks at activity over a window and raises an alert when its conditions are met. |
| Rule version | One version of a rule. Each change creates a new version that must be approved by a different person before it runs. |
| Rules-based draft | A summary produced without AI, labelled Generated without AI — rules-based summary, used when AI is off or unavailable. |
| Sanctions | Legal restrictions, such as asset freezes, imposed on designated persons, entities or countries. |
| SAR | Suspicious activity report: a report of suspicious activity, closely related to an STR. |
| Scenario | A built-in monitoring rule for a known typology, such as structuring or rapid movement. You can tune or switch built-ins off for your institution. |
| Screening hit | A potential match between a customer or party and a list entry, raised for review. |
| Segregation of duties | The principle that one person never plays both parts on the same item. See maker-checker. |
| Sentry Agent | The AI investigation assistant on a case that drafts a memo with summary, cited evidence, typology, recommendation and confidence. |
| Smurfing | Using several people or many small transactions to move cash below reporting thresholds. A form of structuring. |
| Step-up | A fresh second-factor check, at most five minutes old, required for sensitive actions such as filing an STR or activating a rule. |
| STR | Suspicious transaction report: the report filed with the FIU when the MLRO decides a suspicion should be reported. |
| Structuring | Splitting transactions to stay below a reporting threshold, such as the CTR threshold. |
| Suspicion clock | The time allowed, in business days, between recording a suspicion and the MLRO's decision. The default is two business days, set per institution. |
T to Z
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| TFS | Targeted financial sanctions: sanctions such as asset freezes against designated persons, for example under UN Security Council resolutions and Kenya's Prevention of Terrorism Act. |
| Threshold | A named, tunable number in a rule, such as a minimum amount or count, with a currency where relevant. Thresholds are never fixed in the rule itself. |
| Tipping-off | Letting a customer know, directly or indirectly, that they are under suspicion or have been reported. It is an offence, and FlowSentry restricts STR material to prevent it. |
| True match | A screening hit confirmed by a checker to be the listed party. It triggers a risk re-score. |
| Typology | A known pattern of money-laundering or terrorist-financing behaviour, such as structuring or mule fan-in. |