Due Diligence Horizon E-Book (DEMO)

Due diligence doesn't end with what is right in front of us. Sometimes, it is worth looking a little further – towards the horizon. I wanted to create a practical book about AML and KYC with a bit more personality – based on my 15 years of experience in AML and KYC, but sharing that knowledge through humour, unexpected stories, and examples gathered over years of work and travel.

That's where Due Diligence Horizon comes from. The horizon represents the solutions, tools, and ways of thinking that can help AML and KYC specialists, compliance officers, and other financial crime professionals take a broader look at customer due diligence and consider what could be done better. This isn't about changing things simply for the sake of change. Sometimes, all it takes is a different source of information, a better question, an additional verification method, or technology that allows you to conduct AML and KYC checks faster and more effectively.

That's why, alongside PEP screening, Source of Wealth, Source of Funds, and Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO), you will find economics, finance, technology, AI, pop culture, cinema, as well as stories and observations collected during my travels. Sometimes, a story leads to a specific due diligence method. Other times, a seemingly unrelated observation helps you look at a familiar compliance problem from a completely different angle. The aim is to make complex AML and KYC topics easier to understand and, hopefully, simply more interesting to read about.

At its core, however, this is a practical book about customer due diligence and AML/KYC compliance. I explore how to interpret information, where to look for it, how to verify client declarations, identify and assess PEPs, investigate Source of Wealth and Source of Funds, understand beneficial ownership structures, assess customer risk, and make better use of available screening and research tools, including AI. I also devote considerable attention to the grey areas where an AML or KYC procedure doesn't provide a straightforward answer and you need to rely on your own knowledge, experience, and sound judgement.

The book is designed to help you think about how to conduct due diligence checks more effectively, rather than simply complete another checklist. Whether you work in KYC onboarding, AML, compliance, financial crime prevention, or customer risk management, the goal is the same: to better understand who your client is, where the money comes from, who ultimately controls the business, what risks are present, and whether the information in front of you actually makes sense.

I don't present the methods and ideas in this book as the only correct way of doing things. Instead, I want to show different possibilities, practical AML and KYC tools, and alternative approaches that you can assess against your own regulatory environment, risk appetite, and compliance programme.

Because that's what the horizon is really about: occasionally looking beyond the procedure in front of you and checking whether a better way to understand your client and manage the risk might be waiting just beyond it.