Field notes
Sampling customer onboarding without drowning in files
Fintech firms in Tainan and Taipei often keep onboarding evidence across a CRM export, a document vault, and email threads with the compliance mailbox. Pulling a clean sample for an AML control walkthrough can take days if nobody defines the population first.
Start by fixing the population: all accounts opened in a named quarter for a named product. Export identifiers only—application ID, open date, risk band, and whether enhanced due diligence applied. From that list, draw a stratified sample: ordinary customers, enhanced cases, and any accounts later closed for compliance reasons.
Then request evidence packages per sample ID: identity documents accepted, screening result screenshots or logs, and the approval trail when a hit was cleared. Do not ask reviewers to search ad hoc. A shared folder named by sample ID cuts fieldwork time dramatically.
If your archive cannot produce a package within two business days, that delay itself belongs in the findings. Examiners notice slow retrieval as much as missing documents.