UBO Country Registers

Identify corporate Ultimate Beneficial Owners with their local registries

Access a directory of local UBO registries and definitions throughout different territories

Legislation surrounding UBO identification & verification

Since the implementation of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive in 2017, Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs) have gained more prominence in regulatory compliance procedures. The identification and verification of these individuals is a legal obligation for regulated industries when engaging with both customers and business partners.

The 5th Directive then placed an even greater emphasis and transparency of ultimate beneficial ownership. To enhance data availability, the directive instructed member states to create and maintain inter-connected national UBO registries that would to be publically available. These efforts would enable organisations access to secure and reliable corporate information, giving them the tools to reveal complex group structures.

The growing complexity of corporate structures

Corporate structures can become many layers deep and span multiple jurisdictions

Complex structures make UBO identification challenging, sometimes requiring hours if not days to comprehensively analyse and understand corporate ownership. The data required can be spread across numerous sources with varying standards of quality and completeness. 

Although most corporate hierarchies are completely legitimate, these complex webs have become the hiding place for organised criminals using corporate structures to conceal their identities and the origins of their funds. Affiliation with terrorist organisations or corrupt individuals places the reputation of your business at grave risk and can result in a heavy fine. 

For these reasons, more and more business are turning to organisations like Creditsafe, which aggregate and structure data from thousands of sources to streamline the UBO identification and screening process. Access a free trial today to explore Creditsafe's group structure data and UBO screening.

UBO Structure

Find out about local UBO registries & definitions

Click below to download the information pack

To aid your analysis of corporate group structures and support accurate identification of ultimate beneficial owners, we maintain a record of local UBO registers and the definition of UBO in each jurisdiction. 

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