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The Ultimate Customer Due Diligence Checklist

The Ultimate Customer Due Diligence Checklist
The Ultimate Customer Due Diligence Checklist
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As somebody who works for a financial institution, AML compliance needs to be one of your top priorities. One of the main AML compliance regulations states that every financial service company must perform identity verification. This is why it’s especially important to make sure that your customers really are who they say they are, also known as customer due diligence (CDD).

That said, it’s crucial that you closely follow a CDD checklist to avoid fines, criminal negligence, or even a company shut down. Making sure your business is fully compliant with AML regulations is key to protecting both your company and your customers.

This checklist will help to ensure your customer due diligence is completely taken care of:

Check Third-Party Databases

If you rely exclusively on your internal resources to combat fraud or authenticate identities, you’ll likely miss catching fraudsters. This can be the result of human error, limited scopes, or unreliable documentation. That’s why many companies utilize a third party database to check identities. That said, your identity verification efforts can also be limited by your third party system if they aren’t mature or don’t draw from extensive databases.

Because of this, it’s important to do proper research to make sure you choose the right system to back your efforts. Sophisticated systems like Intellicheck, a highly accurate third party identity authentication system, offer greater assurance in your fraud prevention tacts.

Assess Customer Risk

Perform your standard risk assessment measures to determine any red flags as they relate to customer due diligence. This should include attaining certain information from the customer, such as:

  • Full name
  • Genuine photograph/passport/license
  • Residential address from utility bills, telephone bills or bank statements
  • Confirmation of involvement of the beneficial owner
  • Identity check the beneficial owner
  • Purpose of the planned transactions and the source of funds
  • Confirmation against PEP lists, sanctions and other watchlists
  • Detailed anti-money laundering policies and procedures

Because this list can be extensive, the process can be much more efficient and accurate with an integrated and automated identity verification system.

Ensure Secure Storage of Data

Persistent record keeping is arguably as important as initially collecting it, especially when you are required to provide it at a regulator’s requests. The retention policy, meaning the precise amount of time to keep these records, is typically mandated by law and differs per country.

Safely storing and organizing data is the most effective way the company can gain an accurate understanding of the nature of their relationship with the customer. In addition, it is your responsibility to ensure that the data professionally collected from your customers or entities is protected and secured to avoid data breaches. Failure to store data can result in significant losses for not only your business but your customers as well.

Make Sure Technology/Procedures Are Up-To-Date

There are various types of AML software available to help you stay compliant and on top of your CDD efforts. Here are some AML software you should keep in mind when going through your customer due diligence checklist:

Certain AML software, like Intellicheck’s ID scanning solution, takes care of both scanning and storing data with accuracy and efficiency.

Perform CDD Effortlessly with Intellicheck

When it comes to customer due diligence, there’s a lot of things you need to keep in mind. That’s why we’ve created this CDD checklist to help you protect your business. As mentioned before, failure to abide by some of these steps can result in significant losses, jail time or company shut downs which can all be detrimental to financial institutions.

Intellicheck is the trusted ID authentication of law enforcement, State ID producers and financial institutions nationwide. Our solution is simple to use and easy to integrate into your existing systems. Simply scan the ID or have customers take a photo of the barcode on the back of their ID and Intellicheck will gather the information and determine authenticity with up to 99% accuracy. Intellicheck is one of the most effective solutions for catching fake IDs in real-time which can help you stay AML compliant and complete your customer due diligence with the highest possible accuracy.

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