Trusts and beneficial ownership: Guidance for data collection and sharing

Final considerations

This guidance has focused on data collection surrounding the registration of trusts and the beneficial ownership of related parties. The purpose of collecting such information will also require that the information is accessible and useful. For example, if the purpose of trust registration is to help various actors find the beneficial owners of assets held in trusts, then designers of a registry will need to consider how those actors access information, and what information they need.

In particular, designers should consider building features into registration systems which will aid wider, global efforts toward beneficial ownership transparency. Those features should enable the interoperability of beneficial ownership information across different registers and jurisdictions. For example, assigning reference numbers or similar identifiers to trusts on their registration is a significant aid to administering a registry. If these references are unique to each trust, well managed, and made accessible to a wide variety of people, then they can be used to uniquely identify trusts within wider beneficial ownership networks. This is a valuable contribution to transparency efforts. [13]

Additionally, designers should consider allowing layered access to information [14] – that is, creating data downloads, application programming interfaces (APIs) or administrative processes which make different sets of information available to different types of users based on need. Where possible, this information should be provided as structured data. [15]