Can Baselayer identify beneficial owners (UBOs)?

There is no comprehensive public database of beneficial owners in the US, and indirect ownership through holding companies or trusts is not filed anywhere that can be queried.

This information is completely private and no business data provider has access to this data.

What Baselayer provides today:

• Business officers from Secretary of State filings, returned for every business. These are the people filed at registration and, for most small and mid-sized businesses, a strong reflection of who owns and controls it.

• Officer matching. Submit the owners or officers your applicant declared and we return how closely each matches the filed officers and registered agent, so you can confirm the association without reading the filing yourself.

• Officers found online. With the Enhanced add-on, people identified on the business’s website are added to the officers list with source Online.

• Watchlist screening of every officer, filed or submitted, against sanctions and exclusion lists.

A practical approach most customers use:

• Treat the filed officers as the ownership signal of record and compare them against the owners your applicant declared.

• Submit declared owners as officer names so the match fields tell you whether they appear on the filing.

• Where your policy requires ownership percentages or indirect control, collect that from the applicant and use the officer data to corroborate it rather than expecting it from the public record.

Note: For international businesses, structured ultimate beneficial owner and shareholder data is available in some jurisdictions through the international enhanced profile.