KYB: Verify the Company, Ownership and Authority

What KYB needs to establish

Know Your Business processes establish that an organisation exists, understand who owns or controls it, verify relevant individuals and assess whether the relationship fits the organisation’s risk policy.

A registry match alone is rarely the complete decision. The required evidence depends on legal form, jurisdiction, ownership structure, regulated status, product risk and the authority of the person acting for the business.

A complete business verification workflow

1. Collect legal name, registration number, jurisdiction and operating information.
2. Retrieve and corroborate company status, registered address, officers and filings.
3. Map ownership and control to the required depth.
4. Identify beneficial owners and relevant controlling persons under applicable rules.
5. Verify the identity of people who must be checked.
6. Confirm the representative’s authority to act for the company.
7. Screen relevant entities and individuals and assign risk.
8. Monitor material registry, ownership and risk changes.

Complex ownership requires more than a flat API response

Multi-layer, cross-border and trust structures may require iterative evidence collection. Providers differ in how they represent ownership graphs, calculate indirect holdings, handle circular ownership and document why a natural person was or was not identified.

• Preserve the source and retrieval time for each fact
• Separate legal ownership from control indicators
• Record threshold logic and aggregation rules
• Allow reviewers to resolve conflicting or stale data
• Trigger refresh when directors, status or ownership changes

KYB provider evaluation criteria

Proof-of-concept cases

Include active and dissolved entities, name changes, branches, partnerships, sole traders, layered ownership and incomplete records. Measure analyst effort as well as automated completion.