A short compliance glossary for account research

AML — Anti-Money Laundering. The umbrella framework of laws and controls that require financial platforms to detect and report suspicious movement of funds.

KYC / KYB — Know Your Customer and Know Your Business. The onboarding processes that identify individuals and legal entities respectively.

CDD — Customer Due Diligence. The baseline checks applied to every customer, including identity verification and risk scoring.

EDD — Enhanced Due Diligence. Deeper checks applied to higher-risk customers, such as source-of-wealth documentation and senior sign-off.

PEP — Politically Exposed Person. Someone holding a prominent public function, whose accounts require enhanced monitoring.

SAR / STR — Suspicious Activity or Transaction Report. The filing a platform submits to its regulator when activity cannot be explained.

Travel Rule — The requirement that originator and beneficiary information travels with transfers above a threshold, now widely applied to crypto.

Reading platform documentation with these terms in hand makes the reasoning behind verification steps far easier to follow.