Find Ultimate Beneficial Owners

Does your business conduct know your customer or customer due diligence checks on clients? If so, you need tools to identify the ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) of the companies you work with.

If you don’t, you could contravene anti-money laundering regulations and face criminal charges.

Red Flag Alert provides a quick and easy way to look up the ultimate beneficial owner of any UK business.

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Identify Ultimate Beneficial Ownership Details

An ultimate beneficial owner is any person that owns at least 25% of a company’s shares or holds 25% of voting rights over a business. This information isn’t always clear because some assets are legally owned by a different party.

Red Flag Alert provides data on every UK company. This includes corporate linkage information that allows you to understand the relationships between different business entities and their directors.

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Data on Every UK company

1. Identify a company's ultimate beneficial owner

2. Check an ultimate beneficial owner's other business interest

3. See a director's history

4. Check if an ultimate beneficial owner has been sanctioned

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Who Benefits From This Capability?

Understanding who has significant control over the businesses you work with is useful for any company. It helps you assess who you should and should not do business with.

Customer due diligence is required by law in some industries. Companies in the following sectors must have tools to identify ultimate beneficial owners to remain compliant:

Financial institutions or any business dealing in money services
High-value goods dealers (those dealing with individual transactions worth over £15,000)
Trust or company service providers
Accountants
Estate agents
Bill payment companies
Telecommunications, digital and IT payment service providers
Art dealers
Letting agencies

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How Our UBO Feature Works

1. Search

Find the company using their name or company number. Click on the relevant company to bring up a report.

2. Identify ultimate beneficial ownership

The report tells you who has ultimate beneficial ownership over the company. You can find more information on other businesses and directors in the company’s family tree by navigating to the company structure tab.

3. Check risk

Use Red Flag Alert to perform customer due diligence and anti-money laundering checks on the UBO. You can also conduct advanced due diligence if you suspect they are a politically exposed person or on an international sanctions list.

4. Take action

Decide whether to accept, reject or report the business based on the risk profile of ultimate beneficial owners.

60,000 daily updates
9,000 users
Over 1,000 companies already using Red Flag Alert

Over 140+ filters
Company & Director search capabilities
Unique insolvency scoring

Over 100+ data points
UK & International company data
Comprehensive business intelligence

What are the Penalties for Non-Compliance?

Failure to comply with UK anti-money laundering regulations can result in a prison sentence of up to 14 years or a hefty financial penalty.

In December, National Westminster Bank (NatWest) was fined nearly £265 million for anti-money laundering failures.

Understanding ultimate beneficial ownership is complex. Companies House does a good job of recording and displaying corporate ownership. But corporate structures are set up to enable fraud and financial crime by masking the true beneficiaries behind a business.

Read our guide to find out everything you need to know

Find Ultimate Beneficial Owners