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, KYC and Customer Due Diligence, written with a bit of distance and perspective. It is based on my 15 years of experience in AML and KYC, but shares that knowledge through humour, unexpected stories and examples gathered over years of work and travel.

That is where Due Diligence Horizon comes from. The horizon here represents the solutions, tools and ways of thinking that can help AML and KYC specialists, compliance officers, and others working in financial crime prevention take a broader view of due diligence and their own compliance programmes, and consider what could be done better. This is not about changing things for the sake of it. Sometimes all it takes is a different source of information, a better question, an additional verification method or a technology that helps AML and KYC professionals carry out their responsibilities more quickly and effectively.

Alongside topics such as PEP verification, Source of Wealth, Source of Funds and Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO), the book also explores economics, finance, technology, AI, popular culture and film, as well as stories and observations from my travels. Sometimes a story leads to a specific analytical method. At other times, an apparently 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.

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

Above all, the book shows how to carry out customer due diligence more effectively, rather than simply working through another checklist. Whether you work in KYC, AML, compliance, financial crime prevention or customer risk management, the goal is broadly the same: to better understand who the customer is, where their funds and wealth come from, who actually controls a company, what risks are involved, and whether the information in front of you genuinely fits together.

I don't present the methods and ideas described in this book as the only correct approach. Instead, I want to show different possibilities, practical AML and KYC tools, and alternative ways of approaching due diligence that can be assessed and adapted to your own regulatory environment, risk level and compliance programme.

Because that is what this horizon is really about: occasionally looking beyond the procedure in front of you and asking whether there might be a better way to understand the customer and assess the risk properly.