ARCO is Automated Regulatory Compliance Orchestration. It turns the most manual, liability-heavy part of cross-border trading into a deterministic pre-screen. ARCO checks every swap against the full inventory below before anything binds. The inventory covers chemical registration, sanctions and export control, tariffs, carbon, dangerous goods, food contact, minerals and accounting treatment.
The Difference
Legal and compliance teams cross-reference regulatory databases by hand for each cross-border swap. They work through REACH, TSCA, OFAC, TARIC, CBAM and transport classification one register at a time.
ARCO evaluates the same rule families in parallel against published list data. It returns one auditable pre-screen result before either side commits: CLEARED, PENDING or BLOCKED.
A pre-screen, not a ruling. ARCO gates the swap workflow. It screens against published regulatory and sanctions lists and blocks what fails. It is not a legal determination or a regulatory filing. It does not replace your compliance function's formal sign-off.
The Philosophy
ARCO's interface rule is simple. The trader never sees the machinery, only the outcome. Eight registry rule sets run before either side commits. Everything they conclude compresses into one badge and one word. There is no dashboard to interpret.
Progressive Disclosure
Every ARCO result is one view at four depths. A trader sees one badge. An auditor can pull the entire raw evaluation log behind it.
One badge on the swap card: CLEARED (green), PENDING (amber), or BLOCKED (red). Nothing else.
REACH ✓ TSCA ✓ Sanctions ✓ Customs ✓ Transport ✓ Facility ✓ CBAM ✓ — per-check results, engine version, and pre-screen timestamp.
Per-check cards with rule reference, data source, registration number, confidence score, and last sync timestamp.
Timestamped, hash-anchored log of every lookup and rule evaluation — exportable as PDF or JSON.
How it runs
ARCO runs a staged evaluation pipeline that returns a result in seconds on the critical path.
ARCO confirms material eligibility. It verifies party identity. It checks quantity thresholds before the deeper evaluation begins.
ARCO determines which regulatory frameworks apply from the origin, the destination and the material type. It then evaluates the material-specific rules, for example REACH and TSCA, against the material registry.
ARCO screens every party against the live published OFAC SDN list. The matching is fuzzy and confidence-banded. Nobody can override a hard block. On the corridors where they apply, ARCO also screens the UN Security Council, UAE IEC and MOFCOM watchlists. It checks the transport and dangerous-goods classification.
ARCO issues the pre-screen result: CLEARED, PENDING or BLOCKED. It records the full evaluation as a hashed compliance snapshot. The snapshot carries a jurisdiction-scoped validity window. After the window, the swap needs a new screen.
Coverage
Run on every swap, plus corridor-conditional rule sets appended where the route demands them
Clearance validity is jurisdiction-scoped: 72-hour EU/US baseline, tightened to 24 hours on any corridor touching MENA or China
Audited swap lifecycle the pre-screen gates into — no step skippable
Closed result set — every PENDING routes to human compliance review
The Full Check Inventory
Eight base checks run on every swap. ARCO adds corridor-conditional checks when the swap's route touches the relevant jurisdiction. An EU to US swap never carries an APAC registry check. An APAC swap never carries an EU one.
EU REACH / SVHC status via ECHA on every swap; US TSCA inventory via EPA on US corridors. Corridor-conditional registries: IECSC (China), J-CHECK / CSCL (Japan), K-REACH / KCHEMS (Korea), AICIS (Australia), IBAMA / ANVISA (Brazil), NRCS (South Africa), NAFDAC (Nigeria).
ARCO screens every counterparty on every corridor against the live published OFAC SDN list. The name matching is fuzzy and confidence-banded. Nobody can override a hard block. On the corridors where they apply, ARCO also screens the UN Security Council, UAE IEC and MOFCOM watchlists. Deterministic country policy rules, for example the Iran hard block, sit above list matching. Nobody can override them.
China: MOFCOM Export Control List and GACC, keyed on the material's HS code, including the rare-earth extraterritorial flag. UAE and GCC: dual-use control with CWC precursor schedules. Schedule 1 hard-blocks. Schedule 2, Schedule 3 and catch-all reviews need an export licence. MENA counterparties also pass a UBO disclosure gate.
TARIC tariff classification and anti-dumping measures on any leg importing into the EU.
CBAM embedded-carbon declaration on any leg importing into the EU.
IMDG maritime dangerous-goods carriage rules — mandatory for UN-numbered hazmat and any sea leg.
FDA food-contact applicability review on US-bound food-grade-adjacent materials; RMI responsible-minerals screening of the upstream chain.
A per-side accounting-compliance check on accounting-tracked swaps. It covers back-office approval on both sides, standard consistency (IFRS 9, ASC 815 and peers) and, where it applies, the US NPNS assessment.
Re-evaluation, not just expiry. A cleared result is valid for 72 hours on EU and US corridors. It is valid for 24 hours on any corridor that touches MENA or China. A regulatory trigger forces a new evaluation of the affected swaps inside the window. Triggers are a new designation, a MOFCOM or UAE announcement, or an annual registry update. Every check above is a pre-screen against published list data. It is not a legal ruling or a regulatory filing.
Geographic Scope
Three screens apply to every corridor, including corridors with no regional regime of their own. They are sanctions, dangerous goods (IMDG) and responsible minerals (RMI). The sanctions screen uses the live OFAC SDN list plus the UN Security Council, UAE IEC and MOFCOM watchlists. On top of that global layer, ARCO loads corridor-specific rule sets. Today they cover six regions. EU: REACH, TARIC, CBAM. US: TSCA, FDA. APAC: substance registries for China, Japan, Korea and Australia, plus China export controls. MENA: UAE and GCC dual-use, CWC schedules, UBO gating. South America: Brazil. Africa: South Africa, Nigeria.
ARCO onboards a new corridor by loading rules into the existing framework, not by rebuilding it. That is how routes that were once uneconomical to structure become tradable lanes.
Related
Request a walkthrough and watch ARCO run on a staged swap.