Role and Types of Customer Due Diligence (CDD)

March 18, 2024    commerciallawyersinperth
Role and Types of Customer Due Diligence (CDD)

About Customer Due Diligence

When launching a new firm, you should understand what customer due diligence (CDD) is and how it might benefit you. Customer due diligence is the process of confirming your customer’s identity and determining their risk profile. This information, which may be gathered via a CDD checklist, can help you determine whether you should pursue a commercial connection with someone or not.

Aside from assisting with legal compliance obligations, customer due diligence seeks to minimize any potential financial, reputational, operational, or safety consequences of incorrect customer interaction.

Read More – Difference Between Hard And Soft Due Diligence

Role of Customer Due Diligence in Different Industries

Although CDD is consistent across industries, it presents unique challenges and techniques depending on the industry. CDD plays an important part in several industries, including:

1. Banking and Finance

Banks and financial institutions use CDD to analyze risk, identify high-risk customers like Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), and monitor transactions.

2. Real Estate

Real estate brokers use CDD to authenticate client identities, estimate money laundering concerns, and do additional due diligence on high-risk clients.

3. Legal Industry

Legal firms utilize CDD to evaluate clients, particularly for financial transactions, by validating their identity and funding sources. You can also hire due diligence solicitors Perth to oversee the process.

4. Healthcare Industry

Healthcare providers and insurance firms use CDD to verify new customers’ identities, analyze their insurance credentials, and assess potential hazards.

Types of Customer Due Diligence

The various types of customer due diligence include:

  • Regular Customer Due Diligence (CDD)

In most circumstances, standard due diligence will be used. These are often risky situations, but they are unlikely to be realized.

The standard process of due diligence requires you to identify your customer and verify their identification. Furthermore, acquiring information is necessary to determine the nature of the commercial relationship.

This due diligence should assure you that you understand who your customer is and that your service or product is not being used to transfer money or engage in other criminal behaviour.

  • SDD or Simplified Customer Due Diligence

Simplified customer due diligence is the most basic due diligence performed on a consumer. It is apt when there is a lesser chance or risk that your services or customers will be implicated in money laundering or terrorist funding.

When you are satisfied that a consumer, product, and service meet the simplified due diligence standards, you must identify your customer. Simplified due diligence does not need you to validate your customer’s identification like enhanced or standard due diligence does.

The business connection should be regularly examined for trigger events that may necessitate additional due diligence in the future.

  • Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD)

Beyond basic customer due diligence or CDD, you must follow the proper procedures to determine whether enhanced or EDD is required. Enhanced due diligence is a type of customer due diligence that involves a more thorough examination of potential business partnerships and emphasizes the risk that typical customers would not notice due diligence methods.

It can be a continuing process, as existing clients may move into higher-risk categories over time. In that context, regular due diligence checks can help existing consumers.

Customer Due Diligence Checklist

The following is the CDD checklist:

1. Verify your identity before doing business

A crucial component of the Know Your Customer (KYC) laws is that financial institutions must accept full responsibility for who they engage with. Thus, before any transactions can occur, they must determine if they are dealing with an individual or an entity.

2. Record-keeping

Financial institutions must preserve records of all transactions for at least five years. This includes the results of any analyses conducted by the institution and is valid for five years after the client’s business relationship ends.

3. Identifying politically exposed persons

Similar to verifying client names before doing business, banks must go one step further and investigate whether a client is politically exposed, the source of their wealth and funds, and conduct additional surveillance of the connection if anything unusual is suspected.

4. Correspondent Banking

Correspondent banking refers to the relationships between financial organizations. When a customer’s account is with an unknown bank, for example, a financial institution must evaluate that institution’s AML/CFT controls and be satisfied that it has undertaken its own customer due diligence.

5. New technology

New technologies increase efficiency. However, they also lead to an increase in fraudulent activities that were not possible earlier. Financial institutions must remain fully aware of the advances as they occur and execute risk management techniques on an ongoing basis when working with consumers who use these technologies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, customer due diligence types is a procedure that should be performed carefully. Rushing through this procedure may result in future errors that harm the organisation.

Also, the parties involved should be aware of the procedure and its severity. Finally, qualified employees should only carry out the process to save time and resources.

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