Your customer became a PEP yesterday. Does your base know?
Kavuka PEP identifies Politically Exposed Persons and their related parties (RCAs) with tax-ID precision — not by name — classifies risk on a graded scale and continuously re-scans your entire base, with the enhanced due diligence pipeline already attached, per Brazilian regulation.
- By real identity
- match by tax ID, not name
- RCAs in the graph
- family, partners and companies
- Whole base
- monitored continuously
- EDD integrated
- enhanced due diligence pipeline
Engine in production identifying PEPs and related parties by real identity, with continuous re-scanning of regulated institutions’ bases and a per-decision audit trail.
The rules on PEP are objective. Is your process demonstrable?
The name-collision queue
Name-based matching floods the review queue with false positives: every wrong “John Smith” becomes a manual triage that drains the compliance team’s time.
The invisible RCA
Family members, partners and companies linked to the PEP slip past a simple lookup — the indirect exposure regulators expect you to see, and that becomes a headline when you don’t.
The base frozen at the last election
PEP status changes with every appointment and dismissal. A legacy base that is never re-scanned hides the customer who became a PEP after onboarding — and the finding is just a matter of time.
Cost Liability under the Brazilian AML law carries fines up to R$ 20 million and personal accountability for directors, plus recurring regulatory findings. And there is the reputational damage of appearing as the channel for an investigated PEP — the kind of headline that haunts a brand for years.
From identity to monitoring, in one pipeline.
- 01
Identify
Match by tax ID and confirmed attributes against Brazilian sources (federal, state and municipal posts, elected and appointed) and international ones — not by name.
- 02
Expand
The relationship graph reveals RCAs: family, partners and companies with stakes — the indirect exposure a simple lookup cannot reach.
- 03
Classify
Risk graded by post relevance, recency, jurisdiction and associated signals — not a binary block stamp.
- 04
Monitor
The entire base re-scanned continuously: yesterday’s appointment becomes today’s alert, and the new PEP escalates to the EDD pipeline with sign-off and audit trail.
The engine behind every decision
A single query cross-references Brazilian and international PEP sources, expands the related-parties graph and returns a graded risk — ready to feed enhanced due diligence.
Real-identity match
Tax ID and attributes, no name collisions
National and global sources
Federal, state, municipal posts and international lists
RCA graph
Family, partners and linked companies
Ownership structure
Equity stakes and indirect ties
Graded risk
Post, recency, jurisdiction and signals
Continuous monitoring
Appointments and dismissals reflected
EDD pipeline
Enhanced due diligence with built-in sign-off
Audit trail
Identification, classification and review per decision
Who decides with Kavuka PEP
Banks, Fintechs & Payments
The direct obligation under Brazilian banking regulation — identifying and monitoring PEPs in onboarding and the legacy base.
Capital markets & Insurance
Securities and insurance regulators with equivalent duties to identify and apply enhanced due diligence to PEPs.
Crypto & Betting
The newly obligated sectors under AML rules, with PEP identification required in the relationship.
Corporate compliance
PEPs in third-party ownership structures — the anti-corruption red flag and the bridge to KYP/KYS.
The pipeline your AML/CFT manual requires
Kavuka PEP was designed for the risk-based approach of Brazilian regulation and handled for data-protection law from the very first record. PEP is not a ban — it is due diligence: identify with precision, monitor always, approve with a demonstrable process.
- Compliance with Brazilian banking, AML, securities and insurance rules: identify the PEP, classify as high risk, approve at a senior level and monitor.
- Attached enhanced due diligence (EDD) pipeline, with attention to source of funds and documented senior-level approval.
- Per-decision audit trail: each PEP with identification, classification, sign-off and review recorded with source and date.
- Adequate legal bases and public or legally permitted sources; encryption in transit and at rest.
- Data Processing Agreement available for enterprise clients.
The name-collision queue is gone. Tax-ID matching removed the false positives and the AML team went back to handling real cases, not the wrong “John Smith.”
We ran the whole base through the diagnostic and found PEPs and RCAs invisible for years. The relationship graph changed our sense of exposure.
In the last audit, the per-decision trail was complete: identification, classification, sign-off and review. Zero findings on PEP.
How many PEPs (and RCAs) are you not seeing?
Run your current base against our engine and uncover the indirect exposure a simple lookup cannot reach.
- For businesses only. No purchase commitment.
- Data used solely for commercial contact.
- Enterprise leads answered within 1 business day.
What a PEP is and how to identify it precisely
A PEP (Politically Exposed Person) is someone who holds or has held, in recent years, a relevant public office, job or function — elected officials, ministers, heads of state-owned enterprises, senior judges, among others. By regulatory extension, the status also reaches their family members, close associates and the companies in which they hold stakes: the so-called RCAs (related to a PEP). Identifying PEPs is not optional for obligated sectors — it is an objective requirement of Brazilian banking, securities, insurance and AML regulation.
For a customer identified as a PEP, the rules do not impose a block: they impose enhanced due diligence. That means classifying them as high risk, paying attention to the source of funds, obtaining senior-level approval and keeping them under monitoring. A legitimate PEP is a customer like any other; what the rules punish is the absence of process. That is why the solution cannot stop at identification — it must grade risk by post relevance, recency, jurisdiction and associated signals, and attach the EDD pipeline that escalates the case with sign-off and an audit trail.
The Brazilian context makes the challenge worse: the country has tens of thousands of posts that confer PEP status — from ministers to mayors and heads of state-owned enterprises — with electoral turnover every two years. Two classic failures dominate the market. The first is name-based identification: comparing strings generates collisions at scale, false positives that flood the compliance queue. The second is RCA blindness: a simple lookup sees the PEP, but not the family, partners and linked companies — exactly the indirect exposure regulators expect the institution to see.
Kavuka PEP answers both failures with real-identity identification — tax ID and attributes confirmed by Kavuka’s engines, not name comparison — and a native relationship graph that expands from the PEP to related parties. On top of that comes continuous monitoring: appointments, inaugurations, elections and dismissals are incorporated and the entire customer base is re-evaluated, with alerts for status changes. The result is an operation with a queue free of name collisions, indirect exposure made visible, an always-current base and the demonstrable process regulators expect — because PEP status changes with every election, and your base needs to change with it.
What is a PEP?
Someone who holds or has held a relevant public office, job or function — elected officials, ministers, heads of state-owned enterprises, senior judges, among others — plus family members and close associates (RCAs), who inherit the status by regulatory extension.
Does being a PEP prevent the relationship?
No — it requires enhanced due diligence: high-risk classification, attention to the source of funds, senior-level approval and monitoring. A legitimate PEP is a customer like any other; what the rules punish is the absence of process.
How do you avoid name-collision false positives?
By matching on real identity: tax ID and attributes confirmed by Kavuka’s engines, not name comparison. The wrong “John Smith” never enters your queue.
What about related parties (RCAs)?
The relationship graph expands from the PEP to family members, partners and companies with stakes — the indirect exposure a simple lookup cannot reach and that regulators expect you to see.
How often is the base re-scanned?
Continuously — appointments, inaugurations, elections and dismissals are incorporated and the entire customer base is re-evaluated, with status-change alerts and a full audit trail.
Is PEP identification mandatory in Brazil?
In regulated sectors — financial, payments, capital markets, insurance, crypto and licensed betting — yes. Brazilian banking, securities, insurance and AML rules require identifying the PEP, classifying them as high risk, applying enhanced due diligence and monitoring, with a demonstrable trail.
How does PEP integrate with the other platform solutions?
PEP is the natural counterpart of Sanctions Screening (same pipeline), starts from KYC (the customer’s entry point) and escalates to Due Diligence when the case requires EDD. On the Kavuka platform, the four solutions run on the same identity engine and the same relationship graph.
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