Ho Ho UBO

Regulation on ‘Ultimate Beneficial Owners’ is making active and accurate shareholder management a true necessity for both companies and their corporate service providers. The approach on corporate compliance is shifting: from manual one-off compliance exercises repeated over time, towards automated compliance checks & procedures based on trusted real-time corporate information. Is your organization ready to be UBO compliant?

Belgian UBO Regulation in a nutshell

Following implementation of the fourth European Anti-Money Laundering Directive, Belgian companies, foundations and associations have become subject to extensive transparency obligations related to their ‘Ultimate Beneficial Owners’ (‘UBOs’ – i.e. the underlying natural persons with direct or indirect control over the legal entity).

For each UBO, Belgian legal entities must report to the Belgian UBO Register (a central register managed by the Federal  Administration of Treasury) extensive identification data and very specific details about the nature and extent of the ultimate interest in the legal entity concerned.

Besides the obligation of legal entities to report to the Belgian UBO Register, they also have information and communication obligations towards the UBOs.

UBO as UFO in many legal entities – The ‘Unidentified Beneficial Object’

On the one hand, legal entities are obliged to report their UBO information to the Belgian UBO Register on a yearly basis and for the first time ultimately by 31 March 2019.

On the other hand, legal entities also have the obligation to keep sufficient, accurate and actual UBO information at all times AND to report new UBO information every time a change in UBO information occurs.

However, many companies and/or corporate service providers have no practice or process in place to identify UBOs under the said UBO regulation in real-time.

Without a trustworthy digital shareholders’ register that allows legal entities’ shareholder/stakeholder structures to be actively managed, it will be hard to comply with the UBO regulations in a cost & time efficient manner.

One-off exercise vs. real-time reality

The requirements of the UBO regulation prove that a one-off ‘check-the-box’ exercise repeated over time is simply not sufficient anymore to deal with corporate compliance. Especially given the liability risk for directors & officers in case of non-compliance.

Corporate compliance – UBO compliance in particular – requires

• sufficient, accurate and up to date corporate information at all times; and

• both reactive AND proactive compliance checks & procedures that can be automatically applied.

This begs the question:

• Is your organization ready to organize compliance with the UBO regulation in real-time?

• What would it take to organize UBO compliance in a cost & time efficient manner?

Corporify supports UBO compliance!

Corporify has extended its solution for digital shareholders’ registers as part of its corporate & legal housekeeping solution with i.a. the following features:

• visualization of UBO structures in real-time

• accurate management of all required UBO information

• automated UBO compliance checks & alerts when UBO thresholds are passed

• automatically capture and structure the required UBO information ready for reporting

Curious how Corporify can help your organization with its UBO compliance?