Vendor Risk KYC Screening

Workflow

Use Tavily's MCP search and extract tools for source-grounded vendor, merchant, supplier, counterparty, and KYC research; use map or crawl only for known official directories or registries. Treat this as research support, not a final compliance determination.

Treat the guidance below as base guidance; adapt it to the user's request when appropriate.

• Identify the entity, aliases, parent/subsidiaries, executives, jurisdictions, products, and risk categories.
• Break the screen into short subqueries under 400 characters for each alias and risk type: sanctions, enforcement, litigation, regulatory warning, recall, adverse media, cybersecurity incident, supplier risk, and jurisdiction.
• Use exact-match style queries for legal names, people, product names, and phrases that must appear verbatim.
• Search first, then filter by domain trust and source type before extracting. Prioritize official regulators, sanctions lists, court records, recall databases, company disclosures, and credible news.
• Extract selected sources that can support or rule out specific findings.
• Use site navigation only when a known regulator, registry, or company site needs URL discovery.
• Collect multiple pages only for scoped official directories, recalls/advisories, policy pages, or supplier/product pages.

Research Budget

• Start with a small focused search set covering entity aliases, sanctions/regulatory risk, adverse media, and jurisdiction-specific risk.
• Extract only the strongest official or credible sources before drafting.
• Add more searches only for named gaps, such as missing alias coverage, missing jurisdiction coverage, or unresolved high-risk findings.
• Do not use map unless a known regulator, registry, sanctions portal, or company site has specific buried pages to locate.
• Do not use crawl unless the user asks for scoped collection from an official directory, registry, recalls page, or supplier/product section.

Capability Guidance

• Use search for most vendor screening, KYC, adverse media, sanctions, enforcement, litigation, recall, and supplier-risk discovery.
• Use extract on selected official records, regulator pages, sanctions pages, court records, recall databases, company disclosures, and credible news.
• Use map for official registries, regulator sites, sanctions portals, or company domains with hard-to-find pages.
• Use crawl for directories or official record sets only after narrowing the paths and risk categories.
• Use research for full due diligence reports, then verify high-impact claims against original sources.

Query And Source Guidance

• Query legal names, trade names, aliases, parent/subsidiary names, executives, product names, and jurisdiction terms separately.
• Combine entity terms with specific risk concepts: sanctions, enforcement action, consent order, lawsuit, fraud, recall, breach, warning letter, import alert, debarment, bankruptcy, and adverse media.
• Prioritize regulators, sanctions databases, court systems, recall databases, official registries, company disclosures, and credible news.
• Treat unsourced aggregators, copied press releases, and name-match-only hits as low confidence until corroborated.
• Report failed or inaccessible sources when they affect official registries, sanctions pages, or high-risk findings.

Output Template

Use this markdown structure and avoid implying clearance:

# Vendor / KYC Risk Brief: <entity>

## Scope
- Entity and aliases checked:
- Jurisdictions:
- Risk categories:
- Source coverage limits:

## Findings
### High
- Finding:
- Evidence:
- Confidence:

### Medium
- Finding:
- Evidence:
- Confidence:

### Low / Watch
- Finding:
- Evidence:
- Confidence:

## No Relevant Findings In Searched Sources
- <risk category or alias checked>

## Recommended Next Checks
- <next check>

## Sources
- [Source title](URL) - <what it supports>

Say "no relevant findings found in searched sources" instead of "cleared" unless the user supplied authoritative internal checks.