Once you receive results from a PEP screening service, what is the best way to determine if your customer is a PEP or relative of a PEP? The screening result was simply based on name matching and there seems to be little information on many of the PEPs from a web search

Call and ask them is your only option.

We get the CIA list for PEP determination--a fair amount of false positives ensue. If it's a close match, we will call the new account opener and get more info about the new customer. If he's a local plumber, then we feel safe enough that he is not the interior minister of Aruba to close the alert. Our AML system will alert us to any unusual activty in a new account.

We were trying to determine programmatically if possible, but it sounds like unless its completely obvious that the only match is a name then you need to contact the cutstomer directly

You can use a philosophy similar to that generally used with OFAC: As soon as you get a piece of information that discounts the match, drop it and go on to what's next.

Although the exam manual says your geography is not a factor, your clientele certainly is and, for most banks, this is an exercise.