The category
The verdict arrives last. It should arrive first.
Cross-border commodity fraud and sanctions exposure move faster than any gatekeeper can clear them. By the time compliance sees a counterparty, the deal has been structured for weeks and the cargo is already at risk. We call that span the clearance gap, and we built the instrument that closes it.
The enemy
The alert after the deal is built.
It is a posture, not a competitor. Every incumbent sits downstream of the deal, shipping an alert to compliance after the structuring is done. They sell trust by assertion: a verdict you are told to believe. Here is where their output lands.
- Day 0Deal originated
An RM pitches a counterparty and a structure.
- Days 1-20Structuring, blind
Weeks of effort sunk before anyone screens the counterparty. This is the clearance gap.
- Day 21Compliance alert
The incumbent tool fires here: an alert to the gatekeeper, after the structuring is done.
The category
Pre-Deal Clearance
A sub-30-second verdict on a physical-commodity counterparty and deal structure, delivered to the front-office originator before structuring begins, instead of an alert to compliance weeks after. The market has words for everything that happens after the deal is built: screening, KYC, monitoring, alerts. It has no word for the instrument that closes the gap before it. This is that word.
The promised land
- Originators who know in 30 seconds whether to spend three weeks.
- Compliance officers who say yes with their name on it.
- Insurers with a record they can hand the board: dated, named, checkable.
- A trade where the verdict comes first.
The proof the old way fails
One catch, in about 30 minutes, behind a pitched $50M cargo.
In May 2026, a buyer was pitched as Chevron's Group CEO since 2002. Chevron's real Group CEO has been Mike Wirth since 2018. Behind him sat a pitched $50M cargo lift. A bank would have caught it in week 3. The screening engine flagged it in about 30 minutes. That gap is the whole business.
We did not write a case study and ask you to trust it. We published the evidence chain so you can check it yourself: the registration failures, the fictional counterparty, the timeline. Read the record, or watch the replay run on the home page. Evidence, not adjectives.
Where everyone sits
Every incumbent ships an alert downstream. None publishes a pre-deal front-office verdict.
Incumbent comparison · published claims only
4 vendors · 8 dimensions
| Dimension | OilFlow | World-Check | ComplyAdvantage | Sumsub |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data provenance | First-party investigated clusters + 8 public sanctions lists + PEP | Aggregated lists + PEP research database1 | Aggregated lists + adverse-media graph2 | Consumer ID verification + aggregated sanctions data3 |
| Pre-deal front-office surface | Shipped: /predeal verdict in under 30s | Not publicly offered1 | Not publicly offered2 | Not publicly offered3 |
| Regulatory trade-rule coverage | 235 jurisdictions; 79 deep country-KYC profiles | Sanctions only; no per-product trade rules1 | Not offered2 | Not offered3 |
| Per-screen entry price | $25/screen PAYG4 | Quoted privately1 | Custom quote; mid-five-figure minimum2 | Published (consumer per-verification tiers)3 |
| Tamper-evident decision packs | SHA-256 sign-off hash + public verify endpoint | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Time to first screen | Public /check, no key; sandbox key in 60s | Sales cycle (weeks)1 | Sandbox in minutes (sales-touched)2 | Not published |
| Sanctions list breadth | 8 lists + PEP | 20+ global lists + comprehensive PEP1 | Global sanctions + PEP + RCA2 | Comprehensive global coverage3 |
| Broker-fraud cluster screening | First-party investigated clusters (LOI/ICPO/DLC typologies); step 7 of 7-step verification pipeline | Not offered1 | Not offered2 | Not offered3 |
Why the trade layer matters: in its 2026 review of firms' sanctions systems and controls, the FCA found that some firms “didn't have a complete understanding of beneficial ownership” and struggled to identify entities owned or controlled by sanctioned people. Pure list-matching covers name screening; OilFlow adds the trade-rule layer (sanctions-aware tradability and routing across 235 jurisdictions) plus first-party counterparty-cluster intelligence beyond the lists.
Where we lose: the incumbents carry deeper sanctions breadth. We cover the 8 lists the corridors we sell into require; World-Check covers 20+.
- 1. LSEG World-Check public product page
- 2. ComplyAdvantage public pricing page
- 3. Sumsub public pricing page
- 4. OilFlow published pricing
Competitor cells reuse claims from our published /compare pages; sources checked 2026-06-10. “Not published” means the vendor's public pages state nothing for that dimension.
Know before you structure.
Paste a deal: counterparty, product, corridor, payment structure. Get a clearance probability, the blockers, and a restructure path, in under 30 seconds, before you build it. No signup wall. The live tool runs the same data spine as the compliance APIs.
Pre-Deal Clearance. Know before you structure. The proof is a record, not a claim. — Rafae, Karachi