OFSI sanctions search: how to search the UK Sanctions List
The OFSI consolidated list closed in January 2026. How to search the UK Sanctions List correctly, why fuzzy matching is off by default, and what a hit means.
The short answer
Search the UK Sanctions List at search-uk-sanctions-list.service.gov.uk, which replaced the OFSI Consolidated List search when that list closed on 28 January 2026. Search the name unfiltered first, then turn fuzzy matching on, because it is off by default and a transliterated spelling will otherwise return nothing. A clean result is a point-in-time answer, not a discharge of your due diligence obligation.
Search the right list first
The OFSI Consolidated List of Asset Freeze Targets closed on 28 January 2026 and is no longer updated. Its search tool is no longer maintained and is explicitly not for compliance purposes. The UK Sanctions List is now the single source for every UK designation, covering financial, immigration, trade and transport measures rather than asset freezes alone.
The old pages are still online for reference, and that is the hazard rather than a convenience. A search against the retired tool returns a page that loads, a result set that looks normal, and an answer that has been frozen since January. Nothing about the response tells you it is stale.
If a colleague has a bookmark, a saved procedure, or a screenshot in a training deck, check which tool it points at before trusting anything it produced. The live search is at search-uk-sanctions-list.service.gov.uk.
Fuzzy matching is off by default
This is the setting that matters most and the one nobody is told about. The search runs exact and partial matching by default, and fuzzy matching is an option you have to switch on.
For a sanctions search that default is the wrong way round. Designated names arrive transliterated from Arabic, Cyrillic and other scripts, and a single accepted spelling variant is the difference between a hit and a clean screen. Run the search without it and the tool answers a narrower question than the one you asked.
How far fuzzy reaches is set by the length of your search term, so short names get less tolerance than long ones.
| Search term length | Fuzzy tolerance |
|---|---|
| 1 to 2 characters | No fuzzy results returned |
| 3 to 4 characters | Matches with 1 character difference |
| 5 or more characters | Matches with up to 2 character differences |
The practical consequence is that a short surname is nearly an exact search whatever you switch on. For those, search the components separately and cross-check against date of birth and any identification numbers rather than trusting a single clean result.
How to run the search properly
The tool searches across names, addresses and identification numbers, and it is not case sensitive. The order of operations is what keeps you out of trouble.
- Search unfiltered first. The guidance is explicit that filters can hide entries, so a filtered first pass can return nothing while a designation sits one regime over.
- Turn fuzzy matching on and run the name again. Treat the two passes as different searches, because they are.
- Use quotation marks for an exact phrase when you are confirming a known individual, which avoids false negatives caused by names being formatted differently across data fields.
- Search name components separately as well as together. Designated names are recorded with varying word order and with aliases, and a full-string search can miss what a component search finds.
- Only then apply filters, such as regime, date designated, designation type or the sanctions imposed, to narrow a large result set you have already seen unfiltered.
- Record what you searched, when, and what came back. The result is evidence of the check you performed on that date.
Results are ranked exact first, then partial, then fuzzy, with relevance scored by term frequency against inverse document frequency. A low-ranked fuzzy hit is still a hit, so read past the top of the list rather than stopping at the first block.
A clean search is not a clean bill of health
The user guide carries a disclaimer worth quoting to anyone who treats the tool as the end of the process. Reliance on, or use of, the search tool or its results does not limit any criminal or civil liability, and does not reduce the obligation to undertake due diligence.
That matters because UK financial sanctions breaches are enforced on a strict liability basis for civil monetary penalties. Dealing with a designated person's funds can attract a penalty even where you did not know and had no reasonable grounds to suspect. A search you ran and a search you ran correctly are treated very differently once that question is being asked after the fact.
Separately, failure to report frozen funds or economic resources you hold for a designated person can attract a monetary penalty of up to one million pounds, or 50% of the value of the unreported assets, whichever is higher. The search is the beginning of that obligation rather than the end of it.
The results are not static, and that is the real gap
The guidance says plainly that search results are not static and change as the list is updated. The UK Sanctions List is amended frequently, sometimes several times in a week, with designations, variations and revocations across regimes.
So a search answers a question about today. The counterparty you cleared this morning can be designated this afternoon, and nothing about your clean result will change to tell you. For an onboarding check that is fine. For a relationship you hold open, a live facility, or a payment you make repeatedly, it is a control with a gap in it the width of the interval between searches.
The January consolidation is the sharpest illustration. Teams pointed at the old OFSI list did not get an error when it closed. They got silence, from a page that still worked.
Watch the list between searches
Screening tools consume the data file. Monitoring the publication page is the control on the supply of that data, and it is where the January change would have surfaced weeks early, because it was announced on the page before it took effect.
- Add the UK Sanctions List publication page on GOV.UK as a tracked page, and watch the update history rather than the whole page. Government templates carry navigation, cookie notices and feedback widgets that otherwise generate alerts about nothing.
- Add a second monitor on the list of downloadable files and formats, so a format being added, renamed or withdrawn reaches your integration owner as its own alert rather than mixed in with designations.
- Watch the notice block at the top of the publication. That is where a migration like the consolidated list closure is announced, and it is the earliest warning you get.
- Write the rule in plain English, for example alert me when a new designation or amendment is published, so page furniture stays quiet and the alert keeps its meaning.
- Check hourly. UK designations are published in batches rather than continuously, and hourly is fast enough to act the same day without producing a stream nobody reads.
- Route alerts to the financial crime channel with email as a second destination, and keep the snapshots, because a dated record of what the page said evidences when you knew.
What this does not do
Monitoring a publication page does not screen your customers, does not perform fuzzy name matching against your book, and does not replace a sanctions screening vendor or the search tool itself. Anyone selling a change monitor as a screening system is selling you a compliance failure.
What it covers is the part screening assumes and does not check: that the source is still publishing, still in the format you consume, and still the list the government considers current. That is exactly the assumption that broke in January, and it broke quietly.
