Customer verification, beneficial ownership and proportionate due diligence.
Build a customer picture you can explain. Practise verification, ownership tracing, customer-risk decisions and escalation with structured customer-file exercises.
Your materials: 3 practice PDFs · 26 pages, including a fillable workbook. Available from the start.
Completion: LearnAML certificate after completing the course and passing its assessments.
Who this is for & learning outcomes
Frontline staff, KYC/CDD analysts and compliance trainees with basic AML knowledge. Foundations is a useful starting point.
- Identify and verify customers using proportionate evidence.
- Trace beneficial ownership and control.
- Choose simplified or enhanced measures appropriate to risk.
- Assess source of funds and source of wealth explanations.
- Record clear decisions and internal escalation.
- Maintain an up-to-date customer picture.
View course materials ↓ · Explore the lessons ↓
Your learning journey
Work through six lessons and 36 short topics. Each lesson includes practical exercises, worked feedback and a scored knowledge check. Finish with an integrated customer-file exercise and a 20-question final assessment. The pass mark for scored checks is 70%; retakes are available with answer explanations.
1. Customer risk and choosing due diligence
Outcome: Build a customer profile, separate facts from gaps, and justify a proportionate next step.
- 1.1 What CDD needs to establish
- 1.2 Build an expected-activity profile
- 1.3 Turn risk factors into questions
- 1.4 Choose proportionate measures
- 1.5 Work the Aster Trading case
- 1.6 Record the decision and check your understanding
Practice: Write a one-page onboarding decision for Aster Trading.
2. Identify and verify the customer
Outcome: Match identity claims to dependable evidence and resolve discrepancies without collecting unnecessary information.
- 2.1 Identification versus verification
- 2.2 Individual customer evidence
- 2.3 Companies and authorised representatives
- 2.4 Digital identity and remote onboarding
- 2.5 Conflicting or incomplete evidence
- 2.6 Practical file-review exercise
Practice: Review two fictional files and produce a focused evidence request.
3. Beneficial ownership and control
Outcome: Trace an ownership chain to people and explain what remains unverified.
- 3.1 Customer, signatory and beneficial owner
- 3.2 Read an ownership chart
- 3.3 Ownership and other forms of control
- 3.4 Trusts and other legal arrangements
- 3.5 Evidence, discrepancies and escalation
- 3.6 Ownership-mapping exercise
Practice: Annotate a layered company chart and list the evidence gaps.
4. Simplified CDD, enhanced CDD and PEPs
Outcome: Choose measures that address the actual risk and distinguish the relevant PEP situations.
- 4.1 Standard CDD as the operating baseline
- 4.2 When simplified measures are permitted
- 4.3 Targeted enhanced measures
- 4.4 Foreign, domestic and international-organisation PEPs
- 4.5 Family, associates and screening matches
- 4.6 Compare three customer decisions
Practice: Produce a comparison of controls for three fictional relationships.
5. Source of funds, source of wealth and escalation
Outcome: Test a financial explanation with relevant evidence and write a clear internal referral.
- 5.1 Funds for a transaction versus accumulated wealth
- 5.2 Evidence that tests the explanation
- 5.3 Third-party payments and commercial purpose
- 5.4 Resolve contradictions and uncertainty
- 5.5 Internal referral and confidentiality
- 5.6 Build an escalation memo
Practice: Compare a sale-proceeds explanation with the supporting documents.
6. Ongoing due diligence and the integrated case
Outcome: Recognise a meaningful profile change and leave a reviewable record of the response.
- 6.1 Compare actual and expected activity
- 6.2 Events that trigger a review
- 6.3 Refresh information and assess new risk
- 6.4 Records, access and retention rules
- 6.5 Continue, restrict or exit through authorised procedures
- 6.6 Integrated customer-file assessment
Practice: Update the Aster file after a new payment pattern and defend the final decision.
How assessment works
Choose one answer per question. Knowledge checks have six questions, except Lesson 1 which has eight; the final assessment has 20. Each answer earns one point when correct. There is no timer and retakes are allowed. Use the answer review to identify topics to revisit. Written exercises include a self-review rubric and do not receive an automatic score.
Standards behind the course
This course uses FATF’s international standards, with short summaries and original teaching cases. Operational requirements come from local law, sector rules and approved procedures.
FATF Recommendations, amended June 2026 · FATF financial inclusion guidance, June 2025
Source check: 8 October 2026. Customer examples and training-policy conditions are fictional.
Your course downloads
Use these original LearnAML materials alongside all six CDD lessons. Free for registered learners; you can use them from the start of the course.
1. Reference guide
Keep the key evidence checks and practical decision prompts beside you as you study.
2. Practice workbook
Apply each lesson to a fictional case. Type and save your answers, or print and write by hand.
3. Worked answers
Compare your reasoning with the model approach and use the self-review rubric to improve.
Study order: Lesson → reference → workbook → worked answers → online knowledge check. Download the workbook, open it in a PDF reader that supports forms, then save and reopen your copy to check your answers. Use fictional practice data. These downloads do not automatically mark a lesson complete.
Version 1.0 · 9 October 2026. Log in or create a free learner account if prompted.