Adverse Media Categories

Adverse media categories describe the type of risk Minerva found in an article. Administrators choose which categories Minerva is allowed to emit for each screening channel, and API integrations can override that choice for one synchronous search or one entity in a batch. Access: Requires the Admin role or above. In the sidebar, go to Administration > Configuration > Adverse Media, then open Adverse Media Risk Classification. Category configuration is workspace-scoped. A Calibration workspace can use a different category set from Live, and changing one workspace does not change another. Use this guide to align adverse media output with your AML, KYC, background-check, or general screening policy. It covers adding or removing categories independently across Minerva’s four screening channels, and the difference between financial and non-financial crime risk categories. It also covers testing a new category without changing a known API response contract, and overriding the category set for one synchronous search or one entity in a batch.

A risk category is a machine-learning classification of article content, not a finding of guilt, a legal conclusion, or proof that the article concerns the screened subject. Review the identity evidence, source, article context, jurisdiction, dates, and case disposition before making a decision.

How category classification works

Minerva evaluates qualifying adverse media articles for sentiment and one or more supported risk topics. An article can receive more than one risk category when its content supports multiple themes. For example, reporting about a bribery scheme that launders proceeds through real estate can support the Fraud/Bribery/Corruption, Money Laundering, and Real Estate categories. The category configuration is an allow-list:

Category state	What it means
Enabled	The category may appear when the model finds enough evidence for it. Enabling a category does not force Minerva to assign it.
Disabled	The category cannot appear in adverse media risk scores or article flags, and cannot contribute to screening outcomes. Disabling a category does not stop article retrieval or disable the News feed.

Category changes affect subsequent searches and article processing. They do not rewrite completed search results. The model’s internal no-risk outcome is not a configurable category. Two other signals act on the same search results, and neither changes which categories are emitted:

Role-aware adverse media labels or filters an article according to whether it appears to involve the screened subject.
Risk inference reads PEP, Criminal, and High Risk Industry context from the resolved profile text rather than from article content.

For how articles are retrieved, admitted, and capped before any categorization runs, see the Match Scoring Guide.

Financial and non-financial risk

The two groups help administrators align the category set with the purpose of a screening program. They are configuration groupings, not legal classifications.

Financial crime risks

The Financial Crime Risks group contains 28 AML-relevant themes. Its scope is intentionally broader than money laundering alone and includes:

Money laundering, movement of value, concealment of ownership, and sanctions evasion
Alleged predicate offences that may generate criminal proceeds, such as fraud, bribery, corruption, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, smuggling, tax evasion, and organized crime
Terrorist activity and terrorist financing
Products, services, sectors, and assets that can be abused to move or disguise value, such as cryptocurrency, money service businesses, foreign exchange, real estate, casinos, art, precious materials, auctions, and luxury vehicles

These labels help surface media that may be relevant to customer due diligence, enhanced due diligence, transaction-monitoring context, or suspicious activity review. Whether a theme is in scope for a particular AML program depends on the organization’s jurisdiction, products, customer base, risk assessment, and procedures.

A sector-oriented category does not mean that ordinary activity in that sector is adverse. Minerva assigns risk categories from the article’s adverse context, such as laundering through an auction house. It does not assign a category merely because the article mentions an auction.

Non-financial crime risks

The Non-Financial Crime Risks group covers adverse conduct that is useful for background checks, safety reviews, or broader criminal-risk screening but is not, by itself, a financial-crime theme:

Category	What it covers
Other (Non-Financial)	The legacy catch-all for serious adverse conduct that does not fit a specific financial category
DUI	Impaired-driving offences
Property Damage	Vandalism and other attributed damage to property
Assault and Battery	Physical violence against another person

An article may still receive both financial and non-financial categories when the facts support both. For example, an alleged assault connected to an organized-crime enterprise can carry both Assault and Battery and Organized Crime.

Default category set

New and previously unconfigured workspaces preserve Minerva’s established 29-category response contract:

Category group	Default state
All 28 financial crime categories	Enabled
Other (Non-Financial)	Enabled
DUI, Property Damage, and Assault and Battery	Disabled until an administrator enables them

This default prevents newly introduced risk-score keys from appearing unexpectedly in customer integrations. Enable a new category only after downstream mappings, reports, rules, and API consumers are ready to accept it.

Configure categories across screening channels

The configuration page separates four channels:

Channel	What it covers
Onboarding	Screening performed while a new customer or profile is being onboarded.
Ongoing Monitoring	Recurring screening for existing profiles.
Direct API Calls	Synchronous and batch searches submitted with an API application associated with the workspace.
Risk Assessments	Searches run inside risk-assessment and due-diligence workflows.

To change a workspace:

Select the intended workspace, such as Calibration or Live.
Open the channel tab you want to change.
Check a category to allow it, or clear it to prevent it from being emitted.
Use Select all categories only when every downstream consumer can accept all supported keys.
Use Restore defaults to return that channel to the standard 29-category set.
Repeat the review for each channel that needs a different category set.
Select Review changes, confirm the affected channels and categories, add a clear change description, and save.

Use History to review prior deployments or restore an earlier configuration. A rollback creates a new history entry and preserves the audit trail.

Start with one channel in a Calibration workspace. Compare true-positive retention, false-positive volume, reports, rules, and downstream API mappings before reproducing the approved configuration in Live.

Override categories for one API search

The Direct API Calls channel supplies the workspace default for API searches. An integration can replace that default for a single call by sending raw category keys in this field:

global_filters.adverse_media_risk_categories

Resolution order is:

Request-level global_filters.adverse_media_risk_categories
The selected workspace’s Direct API Calls configuration
The standard 29-category default when no workspace configuration exists

A request override can narrow or widen the workspace set. It can therefore enable a category that the workspace leaves disabled. An empty array disables every adverse media risk category for that call. Unknown keys are rejected with an HTTP 400 response that identifies the invalid values. The override changes category emission only. It does not add the News feed or broaden article retrieval, so include News in feeds when the search should perform adverse media analysis.

Synchronous search

Place the override in the POST /v1/search-sync request body:

{
  "type": "individual",
  "name": "John Smith",
  "feeds": ["News"],
  "global_filters": {
    "adverse_media_risk_categories": [
      "moneylaundering",
      "fraud_bribery_corruption",
      "sanctions"
    ]
  }
}

See Search Sync: adverse media risk categories configuration for the live request schema.

Batch search

Place the override inside each applicable object in requests[]. Each entity can use a different category set:

{
  "requests": [
    {
      "type": "Individual",
      "name": "John Smith",
      "global_filters": {
        "adverse_media_risk_categories": [
          "moneylaundering",
          "fraud_bribery_corruption",
          "sanctions"
        ]
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "Organization",
      "name": "Example Holdings",
      "global_filters": {
        "adverse_media_risk_categories": []
      }
    }
  ],
  "feeds": ["News"]
}

See Batch Search: adverse media risk categories configuration for the live request schema.

Financial crime category reference

Display names match the configuration page. The API key is the value returned in results.

Display name	API key	What the category covers
Auctions	`auctions`	Auction-related financial crime, including bid rigging, auction fraud, or value laundering.
Casinos	`casinos`	Gambling-sector crime, illegal operations, junket risk, or laundering through casinos.
Cryptocurrency	`cryptocurrency`	Virtual-asset fraud, illicit payments, darknet activity, mixers, or unregistered exchanges.
Currency Exchanges / Forex	`international_services`	Unlicensed foreign-exchange activity, black-market currency trading, or exchange-based laundering.
Cybercrime	`cybercrime`	Hacking, ransomware, phishing, account takeover, data theft, or other technology-enabled crime.
Fine Art	`fine_art`	Art fraud or forgery, cultural-property smuggling, or laundering value through art.
Foreign Assets	`foreign_ownership`	Hidden offshore accounts, shell structures, unexplained overseas wealth, or high-risk foreign holdings.
Fraud/Bribery/Corruption	`fraud_bribery_corruption`	Fraud, bribery, corruption, embezzlement, kickbacks, or abuse of position for gain.
Human Trafficking	`human_trafficking`	Forced labour, sex trafficking, or other exploitation and trafficking of people.
Insider Trading	`insider_trading`	Trading or tipping on material non-public information, front-running, or insider-led manipulation.
Lending Services	`loan_companies`	Loan-sharking, predatory or unlicensed lending, and lending-related fraud.
Luxury Vehicles	`luxury_vehicles`	Laundering through high-value vehicles, stolen-vehicle networks, or related tax fraud.
Money Laundering	`moneylaundering`	Concealing, layering, integrating, or moving suspected illicit proceeds.
Money Service Businesses	`third_party_transactions`	Unlicensed remittance, suspicious money transfer, structuring through MSBs, or informal value transfer.
Narcotics	`narcotics`	Illegal production, trafficking, smuggling, or distribution of controlled substances.
Non-profit	`non_profit`	Diversion of donations, sham charities, or misuse of non-profit entities to move funds.
Organized Crime	`organized_crime`	Mafia, cartel, gang, racketeering, or other criminal-enterprise involvement.
Rare Gems and Metals	`rare_gems_metals`	Conflict minerals, gold or gem smuggling, or laundering through precious materials.
Real Estate	`real_estate`	Property-related laundering, mortgage fraud, straw buyers, or other real-estate crime.
Recreational Drugs	`recreational_drugs`	Adverse conduct involving recreational drugs, possession offences, or unlicensed operations.
Sanctions	`sanctions`	Sanctions evasion, embargo breaches, or trading with designated parties.
Sex Industry	`sex_industry`	Illegal, exploitative, or financial-crime activity connected with the commercial sex industry.
Smuggling/Contraband	`smuggling`	Illegal cross-border movement of goods, evasion of customs, or contraband trade.
Tax Evasion	`tax_evasion`	Concealing taxable income, false returns, offshore evasion, or VAT/carousel fraud.
Terror Funding	`terror_funding`	Raising, moving, or providing funds for terrorist activity or organizations.
Terrorism	`terrorism`	Terrorist acts, membership, planning, recruitment, or incitement.
Used Merchandise	`used_merchandise`	Fencing stolen goods, pawnshop laundering, or counterfeit second-hand trade.
Weapon Sales/Trade	`weapons`	Illegal firearms sales, arms trafficking, embargo violations, or illicit weapons brokering.

Non-financial category reference

Display name	API key	Default	What the category covers
Other (Non-Financial)	`other`	Enabled	Serious adverse conduct that does not fit one of the specific financial categories.
Assault and Battery	`assault_battery`	Disabled	Alleged or reported physical violence, including assault, battery, fights, or domestic violence.
DUI	`dui`	Disabled	DUI/DWI, impaired-driving arrests or charges, and related intoxicated-driving incidents.
Property Damage	`property_damage`	Disabled	Vandalism, arson-adjacent incidents, collisions, or other attributed property damage.

Get Started

User Guides

Training Videos

Key Concepts

Adverse Media Categories

How category classification works

Financial and non-financial risk

Financial crime risks

Non-financial crime risks

Default category set

Configure categories across screening channels

Override categories for one API search

Synchronous search

Batch search

Financial crime category reference

Non-financial category reference

​How category classification works

​Financial and non-financial risk

​Financial crime risks

​Non-financial crime risks

​Default category set

​Configure categories across screening channels

​Override categories for one API search

​Synchronous search

​Batch search

​Financial crime category reference

​Non-financial category reference

​Related guides

How category classification works

Financial and non-financial risk

Financial crime risks

Non-financial crime risks

Default category set

Configure categories across screening channels

Override categories for one API search

Synchronous search

Batch search

Financial crime category reference

Non-financial category reference

Related guides