Know your client

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Yes, yes yes there’s the worldwide military-industrial complex dedicated to rooting out money laundering — let’s not get drawn into the debate as to whether legalising drugs might be a better policy response than systematically pariah-ising large sections of the emerging world economy and depriving them of access to the developed world’s capital markets — this is about actually knowing your clients. Having a good relationship with them, speaking to them, understanding their business, their expectations and their challenges, as a practical means of managing the risks, and opportunities, they present to your business.

This spills over to a number of Devil’s advocate themes: communication and persuasion; plain English; data; tech.

To this end, reduce risk by building trust with your clients:

• Get to know them. Encourage operational people to communicate informally and often. Encourage social interaction at low levels. (Spend small amounts on lunch, not large amounts on senior people at Wimbledon).
• Be personal, not adversarial. If you go to the legal docs, you’ve lost.
• Be authentic in your communication:

Authentic	Inauthentic
Personal relationships	Legal contracts
Individual email	“Client outreach”
Operations interaction	CEO dialogue
Pitches	Disclaimers
Phone calls	Advertising
“You” and “us”	“Party A” and “Party B”
Frank and the team at BFG	BFG Client Services
Dear Lisa I’m writing to let you know...	Dear Client: Please be advised that...