Legal Name Normalization

Legal name normalization is the process of standardizing variations of a person’s or entity’s name to ensure consistency across compliance,onboarding, and fraud detection systems. Names often appear differently due to spelling variations, abbreviations, transliterations, or inclusion of prefixes and suffixes.For example, “J.P. Morgan,” “JP Morgan,” and “J P Morgan Chase & Co.” may all refer to the same legal entity. Normalization techniques, often supported by natural language processing (NLP) and AI, help financial institutions avoid duplicate records, improve matching accuracy, and strengthen identity resolution.This process is critical in KYC, KYB, and AML screening, where accurate name matching reduces false positives and ensures compliance with sanctions, watchlists, and regulatory requirements.