Beneficial Ownership & UBO Screening API
A company name is not a counterparty — the people behind it are. One call returns the persons with significant control of a UK company, screens each of them against consolidated sanctions and politically-exposed-person registers, and walks corporate owners upward until it reaches the humans at the top.
Ownership, not just registration
Anyone can tell you a company exists. The question that decides a deal is who is behind it
Persons with significant control
The UK register of beneficial owners, held locally: 15.8 million holdings across 5.7 million companies. Each holding carries the nature of control — shares, voting rights, or the right to appoint directors — not just a name.
Screened, one owner at a time
Every owner is matched against consolidated OFAC, EU, UK and UN sanctions lists and a politically-exposed-person register. A hit names the list and the reason rather than returning a score you cannot audit.
A verdict that can say 'I don't know'
Clear, review, or incomplete — three values, not two. It is never 'clear' when Companies House has withheld a holder or when no owners are on file, because screening nobody is not the same as finding nobody.
Follows the chain upward
When a company is owned by another company, the chain is walked until it reaches people or runs out of register. Layers of holding companies are the point of a holding company; stopping at the first one answers nothing.
Dissolved companies still answer
Ownership history is often exactly what a due-diligence question is about. A company struck off the live register still returns who controlled it, flagged as dissolved.
No per-call data bill
The registers are collected and hosted by us, from the state that publishes them. That is why this costs 8 credits rather than the dollars a resold KYB lookup costs — and why the price does not move when you run a list.
Beneficial Ownership use cases
Common workflows teams run with this data.
KYB before you sign
Confirm who actually controls the entity on the other side of a contract, and that none of them sit on a sanctions or PEP list.
- Persons with significant control
- Sanctions and PEP screen
- Auditable verdict
Supplier and partner onboarding
Run a counterparty list through ownership screening rather than checking that a company number merely exists.
- No per-lookup data fee
- Same price on volume
- Dissolved entities included
Ownership structure mapping
Walk holding-company layers to the natural persons at the top, and see where the chain stops and why.
- Corporate owners followed
- Depth reported
- Gaps stated, not filled
Start using Beneficial Ownership today
One API, universal credits, and 200 free credits a month. Live in about five minutes.