Customer Due Diligence (CDD)

What is customer due diligence?

CDD is the work you do to know who you are dealing with before you provide a service or move money. It covers collecting and verifying a customer’s identity, understanding the business and its beneficial owners, and forming a view of the risk they present. For an Australian business onboarding a new corporate customer or supplier, that means confirming the ABN and ASIC registration, identifying the people who ultimately control the entity, and checking those details are genuine rather than taking a form at face value.

Why it matters for Australian finance teams

Under the AML/CTF regime supervised by AUSTRAC, CDD is a baseline obligation for reporting entities, and higher-risk customers attract enhanced due diligence on top. Beyond compliance, good CDD is a direct fraud control: many payment scams begin with a counterparty who was never properly identified, such as a ghost vendor added to the master file. For finance teams, weak CDD means both regulatory exposure and an open door to paying entities that do not really exist or are not who they claim.

How ezyshield helps

ezyshield supports the identification and verification core of CDD by confirming the person, the business via ABN and ASIC records, and bank account ownership before money moves, with re-verification whenever key details change. Every check is captured in an append-only audit trail, logged and never edited or deleted, so you can evidence the due diligence you performed. ezyshield handles the verification and record-keeping elements rather than the full risk-rating and reporting scope of a CDD program. See how it works and our guide to Know Your Business (KYB) in Australia.