10 February 2023

The Wolfsberg Group is pleased to announce the release of version 1.4 of the Correspondent Banking Due Diligence Questionnaire (CBDDQ) and version 1.2 of the Financial Crime Compliance Questionnaire (FCCQ), along with updated supporting Guidance, Glossary and FAQs documents.

The CBDDQ updates include a new section on Fraud and additional questions related to Whistleblower Policy, Virtual Bank License, the approval of Sanctions Policy, and other changes designed to improve the logic, usability and flow of the questionnaire. The Declaration Statement has been updated to include a revised period for update of the Questionnaire. Commensurate changes were made to the FCCQ to ensure consistency with CBDDQ v1.4. 

The previously issued Completion Guidance and Capacity Building Guidance have been combined into a single guidance document, which highlights the potential risk addressed by questions and considerations the Respondent should make while responding to the question. Guidance notes are also provided for those questions where further explanation or definition would serve to aid readers’ understanding. 

The FAQ and Glossary documents have also been updated to address changes in the Questionnaires. Of note in the FAQs, the recommended timeframe for update of the Questionnaires has been adjusted to 12-18 months. This change addresses concerns of perceived expiration date of the questionnaire on a specific date which can cause delays when this date does not align with CDD review period.

05 May 2021

The Wolfsberg Group is pleased to announce the publication of French language translations of the Glossary, FAQs, and Completion Guidance for the Correspondent Banking Due Diligence Questionnaire (CBDDQ). The Group believes that these materials demonstrate our ongoing commitment to provide information to financial institutions around the world to enable them to understand better the requirements of the CBDDQ and assist in the continued adoption of the CBDDQ. The translations can be found in the Publications tab under Translations.

05 October 2020

The Wolfsberg Group is pleased to announce the publication of Spanish and Japanese language translations of guidance materials for the Correspondent Banking Due Diligence Questionnaire (CBDDQ). The Group believes that these materials demonstrate our ongoing commitment to provide information to financial institutions around the world to enable them to understand better the requirements of the CBDDQ and assist in its continued adoption. The translations can be found in the Publications tab under Translations. 

17 April 2020

The Wolfsberg Group is pleased to announce the release of version 1.3 of the Correspondent Banking Due Diligence Questionnaire (CBDDQ) and version 1.1 of the Financial Crime Compliance Questionnairer (FCCQ) along with updated supporting FAQs, Completion Guidance and Capacity Building Guidance. The changes in the two questionnaires are focused on greater clarity and ease of use and the principal changes are:

• Questions CBDDQ ‘14’, ‘70’ and FCCQ ‘27’ were changed to refer to ‘non-resident’ rather than ‘offshore’ customers.
• Question CBDDQ ’77’ and FCCQ ‘31’ have been changed to refer to ‘suspicious activity’ rather than from ‘currency’ reporting.
• Question CBDDQ ‘94’ was removed and blanked out thus not changing the numbering of the following questions.
• Various questions were updated so that responses are in a drop-down format or additional options were added to provide more specific answers.

27 June 2019

The Wolfsberg Group has published a series of materials supporting the implementation of the Correspondent Banking Due Diligence Questionnaire (CBDDQ). These materials have been designed to aid ‘capacity building’ in the industry, as well as support the objectives of the G20 and other supranational organisations towards a well supervised and more harmonised regulatory standard in correspondent banking. The Wolfsberg Group expects that these materials will be very useful to public sector entities as they work with banks and countries looking to enhance their own financial crime compliance programs, as well as to banks and other financial institutions for their own training needs.

The materials can be found in the Capacity Building Materials subpage, accessed through the drop-down menu on the 'Wolfsberg CBDDQ' page. 

01 June 2018

The Wolfsberg Group has updated the Correspondent Banking Due Diligence Questionnaire (CBDDQ) due to a small number of administrative corrections.

The relevant changes are:

• The correction of question ’15 a’ drop down, which read ‘5001-1000 employees’ instead of ‘5001-10000 employees’
• Under the ‘Declaration Statement’, the date format has been standardised and the character allowance applied for Bank Name and Personnel Name fields have been increased.

Additionally, the Wolfsberg CBDDQ FAQs has also been updated to correct an acronym spelling.

22 February 2018

The Wolfsberg Group is pleased to announce the publication of the updated Correspondent Banking Due Diligence Questionnaire (CBDDQ) and related guidance material (Completion Guidance, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Glossary).

The CBDDQ aims to set an enhanced and reasonable standard for cross-border and/or other higher risk Correspondent Banking Due Diligence, reducing to a minimum any additional data requirements, as per the Wolfsberg definition and current FATF Guidance. It is also the Group’s expectation that the Group members will begin to use the CBDDQ, in a phased approach, with all of their respondents.

In the long term, it is the Group’s view that the adoption of a standardised, reasonable CBDDQ should engender a less arduous, and thereby inherently less costly, due diligence process for Correspondent Banks, which, as it beds down, should also allow for a standard which all Financial Institutions, and their supervisors, can work towards achieving. This should, in the end, support the objectives of the G20 and other supranational organisations towards a well supervised and more harmonised regulatory standard in the correspondent banking space, with longer term positive effects on de-risking, access to finance, the development of trade and financial inclusion.

The Group is also conscious that its original questionnaire has been used in multiple other customer type due diligence scenarios and, therefore, while not seeking to prescribe how, or for which customer types, the questionnaire should be used, the Group has nonetheless issued the Wolfsberg Group Financial Crime Questionnaire (FCCQ) which is a shorter version of the CBDDQ and contains a basic set of questions to address Industry demand.