A know your client checklist is a working document, and the useful question about one is not what is on it but what it leaves behind. Two practices can run identical steps and end up in completely different positions a year later, purely because one recorded what it relied on and the other recorded that it had finished. What the checklist must contain is determined by your regulator, your professional body and your own compliance adviser, and nothing here is a statement of any requirement. The four properties below are about form, and they are yours to decide.
Each item names what would satisfy it
An item reading verify identity leaves the person running it to decide what counts, which means different people decide differently and nobody can reconstruct why. An item that names, in your practice's own words agreed with your adviser, what you accept as satisfying it produces consistent work and an answerable record. This is the single change that most improves a checklist, and it costs one conversation.
Each item records who, when and on what basis
Three fields against every item: the person, the date, and the document or source relied upon. Without them the checklist is a claim that work was done. With them it is a record of work done, which is a different kind of artefact entirely, and the difference only becomes visible at the moment somebody asks a question about a client from two years ago.
It lives with the client and carries a review date
A completed checklist filed by date, in a folder of completed checklists, is very hard to use. The same checklist attached to the client record is trivial to use, because the question is always asked about a client and never about a date. And a review date on the record, rather than a memory that this will need revisiting, is what makes recurrence something the system surfaces instead of something somebody has to think of.
Questions people ask about know your client checklist
What should be on a know your client checklist?
That depends entirely on your jurisdiction, your sector and your regulator, and this site does not publish it. Your professional body and your own compliance adviser are the sources; the form of the checklist is what you control.
Should the checklist be the same for every client?
One checklist with conditional items usually works better than several, because separate versions drift apart. Which conditions apply is a matter for your own adviser.
How long should completed checklists be kept?
For whatever period your retention policy states, decided with your adviser and then applied by the system rather than case by case, so that retention is consistent without anybody maintaining it.