EDD — Enhanced Due Diligence — is a more rigorous form of customer due diligence applied to customers, beneficial owners or transactions assessed as higher-risk. EDD triggers include PEP status, customers from high-risk or sanctioned jurisdictions, complex or opaque ownership structures, cash-intensive business models, unusual transaction patterns, and red flags raised by ongoing monitoring. EDD typically involves senior-management approval to commence or continue the relationship, more granular source-of-funds and source-of-wealth inquiries, deeper beneficial-ownership verification, increased monitoring frequency, and additional documentary evidence. EDD is required by the AML/CTF Rules and forms the high-end of the risk-based approach: the higher the assessed risk, the deeper the diligence and the more senior the approval.
What EDD means in practice from 1 July 2026
Tranche 2 sectors will see EDD apply to a meaningful slice of their book — every PEP, every complex trust structure, every offshore beneficial owner, every high-value cash deposit. Building EDD into your onboarding workflow rather than treating it as a one-off exception is what separates a defensible program from one that fails an AUSTRAC review.
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