This guide covers how to structure your portfolio, choose monitoring cadences, configure notifications, reduce noise, and operationalize Baselayer’s monitoring engine for underwriting, risk, compliance, and portfolio management.

Make sure to review Portfolio Monitoring: Basics before reading this guide.

1. Principles of Effective Monitoring

A strong monitoring program should achieve three goals:

1. Detect meaningful changes early

Identify signals that suggest operational, financial, or reputational risk, such as:

OFAC or PEP flags
SoS Standing changes
Leadership/officer turnover
Address changes
New litigations or bankruptcies
New liens
Activity within Baselayer Identity Network

2. Reduce noise for your teams

Monitoring works only if it’s actionable.
Avoid overwhelming analysts with low-value alerts.

3. Scale across products, teams, and risk tiers

The monitoring needs of:

a high-risk lending product
a portfolio of bank accounts
a marketplace onboarding vendors

…are very different.

Baselayer’s Portfolio Monitoring is designed to let you tailor each segment precisely.

2. Choosing the Right Monitoring Frequency

Frequency determines how often Baselayer reviews each business.

Our standard recommendation is to use a monthly monitoring frequency. This works well for most products and portfolios, and achieves a great balance between risk control and number of alerts.

Common cadences/frequencies and when to use them:

Daily

Use for the highest-risk cohorts:

Businesses with prior fraud, instability, sanctions risk
Lending products with fast exposure changes (MCA, revenue-based financing)
Businesses monitored for OFAC/PEP compliance

Weekly

Use for:

High-risk lending portfolios
Compliance programs requiring fresh data
Marketplaces with real-time vendor risk needs
Litigation-sensitive businesses

Monthly

Recommended default for most SMB lending portfolios.

Good for:

Term loans or credit lines
BNPL merchant oversight
Vendor risk monitoring
Standard KYB/CDD programs

Quarterly / Biannual / Annual

Use for:

Low-risk, long-term customers
Legacy portfolios where only major changes matter
Light-touch compliance programs

3. Recommended Monitoring Attributes by Use Case

Different products require different monitoring strategies.

SMB Lending (Term Loans, BNPL, Credit Lines)

Recommended monitorable attributes:

Liens
Litigations & Bankruptcies
OFAC/PEP
SoS Standing
Business profile changes (addresses, DBAs, officers)
KYB & Risk Scores
Identity Network (to detect credit stacking)

Suggested frequency: Monthly
Optional for high-risk segments: Weekly

Marketplaces / Vendor & Supplier Risk

Focus on:

SoS Standing
Business profile changes (addresses, DBAs, officers)
Litigations & Bankruptcies

Suggested frequency:Monthly

Payments, Banking, or Compliance-Heavy Use Cases

Recommended attributes:

OFAC/PEP
Identity Network
SoS Standing
Business profile changes (addresses, DBAs, officers)

Suggested frequency: Daily for sanctions, weekly/monthly for other fields

4. Best Practices for Structuring Your Portfolio

The most effective monitoring programs use Groups to segment their book.

Why Groups Matter

Groups allow you to:

Assign different Monitoring Policies
Assign different Notification Subscriptions
Control noise
Separate teams’ responsibilities
Scale operational workflows

Recommended grouping strategies:

Common grouping strategies include:

By Risk Tier
By Product
By Team Ownership
By Geography or Regulatory Region

5. Principles For Clean, Actionable Notifications

Notification Subscriptions determine who gets notified and what they receive.

1. Notify teams only about what they care about

Examples:

Compliance: OFAC, PEP, SoS Standing
Legal: Litigations, Bankruptcies
Credit: Liens, Score Changes
Fraud: Address, Officer, DBA Changes, Identity Network

2. Use separate frequencies per team

Examples:

Compliance: daily
Credit or Legal: monthly
Account Management: monthly

It is also common to separate frequencies by role:

Risk leads should only receive notifications monthly
Underwriters who know the portfolio in-depth might require daily or weekly updates

3. Avoid sending massive global digest emails

Instead, create team-specific Notification Subscriptions scoped by Group.

4. Don’t notify on everything you monitor

Monitor broadly. Notify narrowly.

A drop in KYB or Risk Score is often a cleaner early signal than raw field changes - consider using Score changes as the main indicator.

6. When to Use Item-Level Overrides

Most monitoring can be controlled at the Portfolio or Group level.
Use Item-level Monitoring Policies only for special cases such as high-value loans or businesses flagged for concern.

Overrides should be rare and deliberate.

7. Suggested Monitoring Templates

Template 1: Standard SMB Lending

Monitoring cadence: Monthly
Notification cadence: Monthly

Monitor:

SoS Information (set by default)
Liens
Litigations
Bankruptcies
Identity Network
PEP
OFAC

Notify:

Compliance:

Registration standing
Officers
Litigations
Bankruptcies
PEP
OFAC

Credit:

Score changes
Liens
Litigations
Bankruptcies
Identity Network

Groups:

Standard
High-Risk (weekly monitoring)

Template 2: Marketplace Vendor Oversight

Monitoring cadence: Monthly
Notification cadence: Monthly

Monitor:

SoS Information (set by default)
Litigations
Bankruptcies

Notify:

Risk:

New registrations
Registration standing
Addresses
Officers
Alternative names
Litigations
Bankruptcies

Template 3: Bank / Compliance First

Monitoring cadence: Weekly (daily for OFAC/PEP)
Notification cadence: Weekly

Monitor:

SoS Information (set by default)
Identity Network
PEP
OFAC

Notify:

Compliance:

PEP
OFAC
Officers
Registration standing
Identity network

10. Putting It All Together

To build an effective monitoring program:

1. Start with the default Portfolio Monitoring Policy

Use monthly cadence + broad monitorable attributes.

2. Create Groups for segmentation

Separate businesses by risk, product, or team.

3. Apply Monitoring Policy overrides only where needed

High-risk or special-handling segments.

4. Use separate Notification Subscriptions to route the right signals to the right people

Compliance ≠ credit ≠ legal.

5. Monitor more attributes than you notify on

Monitoring should be broad.
Notifications should be selective and actionable.

6. Periodically review monitoring cadences

Your portfolio risk mix will evolve.

7. Use snapshots and changes for audits

Portfolio Monitoring maintains a full historical record - ideal for compliance, regulators, and audits.

Summary

A well-designed monitoring program:

Detects meaningful changes early
Reduces noise while surfacing real risk
Scales across products and teams
Supports ongoing CDD and regulatory expectations
Provides full auditability
Gives lenders and platforms continuous visibility into portfolio health

By structuring your monitoring policies, cadences, and Groups thoughtfully, Baselayer Portfolio Monitoring becomes a powerful, low-maintenance system that strengthens underwriting, compliance, fraud detection, and portfolio oversight.