Beneficial ownership glossary

The system a country uses to facilitate access to beneficial ownership information, including the rules, regulations, technical systems, and processes that make up this system.

Accountability is an acceptance of responsibility for honest and ethical conduct towards others. In a wider sense, accountability implies a willingness to be judged on performance.

The details or particulars of the place where someone lives or an organisation is situated.

An individual or organisation responsible for making (or supporting) a statement or annotation.

A negotiated and typically legally binding arrangement between parties as to a course of action.

A detailed, repeatable sequence of actions to perform to accomplish some task.

An explanatory note or body of notes added to a text. In BODS, an annotation can be used to hold information (structured or otherwise) for which a place does not exist elsewhere in the schema.

A company's yearly report to shareholders, documenting its activities and finances in the previous financial year.

An entity that has been identified, but for which no identifying information is being published.

A computing interface – including coding language, functions, code snippets, and tools – that allows applications to connect with a software or data platform.

See legal arrangement.

A group of related data values (called elements) that are grouped together.

An item of property owned by a person or company, regarded as having economic value. For instance, bank accounts and real estate are assets.

A document that records an event in an information technology (IT) system.

A beneficial owner is a natural person who has the right to some share or enjoyment of a legal entity’s income or assets (ownership) or the right to direct or influence the entity’s activities (control). Ownership and control can be exerted either directly or indirectly.

Beneficial ownership is a natural person’s right to some share or enjoyment of a corporate vehicle’s income or assets (ownership), or the right to direct or influence its activities (control). Ownership and control can be exerted either directly or indirectly.

The Beneficial Ownership Data Standard is an open standard providing guidance for collecting, sharing, and using high-quality data on beneficial ownership. See also: BODS.

A statement of how beneficial owner(s) exercise ownership and control. Declarations may be legally required in some jurisdictions; they may put the legal onus on companies or on beneficial owners.

The legal duty to reveal an element or mechanism of ownership or control as part of a beneficial ownership declaration.

Information contained in a beneficial ownership disclosure or register, concerning the identity of individual(s) or entities who directly or indirectly own or control a company or other corporate vehicle, the corporate vehicle, and the ownership or control relationship(s) between them.

Beneficial ownership transparency is an area of policy reform. It refers to the disclosure of beneficial ownership information by corporate vehicles, which is collected by authorities. The key information is made available to a range of actors, who use the data to achieve various policy goals.

The person or legal entity who benefits from a trust's holdings or activities.

Noun: An advantage or profit gained from something.

Verb: Receive an advantage; profit.

Collecting and managing information so that questions about "who knew what" at specific points in the past can be addressed.

A group of people constituted as the strategic decision-making body of an organisation.

See Beneficial Ownership Data Standard.

BOI is the acronym of "beneficial ownership information" (see above).

A value that is either TRUE or FALSE.

BOT is the acronym of "beneficial ownership transparency" (see above).

Accepted as being both accurate and authoritative. The version of something that should be used as the preferred reference.

A log or record of all notable changes made to a project.

An assertion of something as a fact. In BODS, each statement represents a claim about beneficial ownership made by a particular source at a particular point in time.

A list of acceptable values that can be used for a property.

A commercial business.

A company’s articles are rules, chosen by the company’s members, which govern a company’s internal affairs. They form a statutory contract between the company and its members, and between each of the members in their capacity as members, and are an integral part of a company’s constitution. They may also be referred to as Articles of Association.

A constituent part.

An abstract representation of a system including the objects it contains, their attributes and relationships. Can be used to help communicate important features.

The state of meeting a specified standard.

An application that imports BODS data from an external source.

A written or spoken agreement that is intended to be enforceable by law.

The ability to direct or influence the actions of a legal entity or arrangement.

Includes companies, trusts, foundations, partnerships, and other types of legal entities and arrangements.

A person or software system which receives and uses a set of data.

A data model defines, groups, and structures data about the real world. It is a template for how to represent a real-world object type or concept type with data.

A description of the structure, scope, and properties of a structured set of data.

A data schema and guidance for publishing data on a given topic. This includes: clear field-level definitions, the structure and grouping of fields, and the format to publish in.

Checking that data conforms to a system's or standard's requirements. For example, a data export is made on 11 February 2018 and a data standard requires the export date in YYYY-MM-DD format. The export date is recorded as "2018-02-11" which is valid and true. (Note: data can be valid without being true. In the previous example, if the export date had been recorded as "2018-11-02", the data is valid but incorrect).

The combination of checks and processes that a system undertakes to ensure that data is accurate and complete at a given point in time.

An organised collection of data, generally stored and accessed electronically.

A collection of data.

Controlling or financially benefiting from the activities of an entity without another intermediary entity or natural person.

A member of the board of people that manages or oversees the affairs of a business.

Part of a declaration that reveals an entity or person and their ownership or control of a company.

The last stage of liquidation, the process by which a company is brought to an end, and the assets and property of the company are redistributed.

A piece of written, printed, or electronic matter that provides information or evidence or that serves as an official record.

A single part of a larger group. For example, in computer programming an array can contain different elements that can be stored and called upon individually.

In the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard, an entity includes any possible target of an ownership or control relationship, including registered entities and legal arrangements.

BODS schema object.

An element of a structured dataset or data model that can contain an item of data.

A resource on a computer that stores data, information, settings, or commands used with a computer programme.

A financial statement or other formal document submitted to a regulator or other official organisation.

National centres which collect reports on suspicious or unusual financial activity from the financial industry and other entities or professions. Suspicious transactions may relate to money laundering, terrorism financing, and other illegal activities.

The way in which something is arranged or set out.

A company's articles of association (AoA, called articles of incorporation in some jurisdictions) which, along with the memorandum of association (in cases where the memorandum exists) form the company's constitution, defines the responsibilities of the directors, the kind of business to be undertaken, and the means by which the shareholders exert control over the board of directors.

Unstructured text written in ordinary language.

A function that a system must provide.

A 128-bit number used to identify information in computer systems. This can also be referred to as a universally unique identifier.

A golden share is a type of share that gives its shareholder veto power over changes to the company's charter. It holds special voting rights, giving its holder the ability to block another shareholder from taking more than a ratio of ordinary shares.

An identifier for uniquely and persistently describing a real-world entity in statements, for example, a combination of a company register and a company number.

An identifier for uniquely and persistently describing a natural person in statements, for example, a combination of a tax authority and a tax identification number.

A unique and persistent identifier for a statement about an entity, natural person, or ownership-or-control relationship, e.g. ad2c612c-d978-47f3-89a3-f72be20c4448.

Information which can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as their name, social security number, biometric records, etc. alone, or when combined with other personal information which is linked or linkable to a specific individual, such as date and place of birth.

Unchanging over time or unable to be changed. For example, the properties of an immutable object cannot be changed.

The process of putting a decision or plan into effect.

An organisation or individual who is using or preparing to adopt the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard.

Money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments.

Controlling or financially benefiting from an entity via ownership or control of an intermediate entity or person.

The process of combining data from different sources.

The particular way that a legal or natural person owns or controls an entity.

The person or entity who has interest(s) in another entity. In BODS, this is recorded within a BeneficialOwnershipStatement.

An entity in a chain of ownership/control which sits between an ultimate beneficial owner and the ultimate object of its ownership.

The quality that different datasets possess whereby they work or communicate together without the need or use of additional tools or interfaces.

An investment fund generally refers to a type of collective scheme that pools together money from different investors, both individuals and institutions, to invest in different types of assets, including real or financial assets.

A legal mechanism allowing multiple (natural or legal) persons to share a single ownership stake in a legal entity.

A string syntax for identifying a specific value within a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) document.

A geographical scope of legal authority.

A file for recording and totalling economic transactions.

Denoting or relating to software or hardware that has been superseded but is difficult to replace because of its wide use.

Obsolete: this term has been replaced in January 2023 by "corporate vehicle". An organisation, such as a company or partnership, that has its own legal personality, liabilities, and rights; for example, the right to enter into contracts.

Obsolete: this term has been replaced in January 2023 by "corporate vehicle". A legal arrangement is a vehicle created between parties, associating one or more natural or legal persons together in an ownership or control relationship, which lacks separate legal personality, such as a trust or certain types of partnerships.

A combination of legislation (primary and secondary) that outline the rules, rights, and obligations of companies, governments, and citizens in a given area.

The legal holding of a natural or legal persons in an entity.

An entity or natural person who has legal rights and obligations.

The series of developments that take place in a data schema from its beginning until the end of its usefulness.

Any information the computer or computer processor is capable of reading and interpreting.

The concealment of the origins of illegally obtained money, typically by means of transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses.

A human being.

An object containing one or more other objects.

A data structure that contains data fields.

Data that anyone can access, use, or share.

An organised group of people with a particular purpose, such as a business or government department.

The right to receive profits, income, interest, etc. from a property or investment.

A series of entities and people, plus the ownership or control relationships between them, which link a company with a beneficial owner.

A relationship of ownership or control that exists in the real world between an interested party and an entity.

A statement that describes a relationship of ownership or control that exists between an interested party and an entity. PLEASE NOTE: the terminology Open Ownership will use from May 2024 is "relationship statement". See relationship statement.

A software component that takes input data (frequently text) and builds a data structure.

Continuing to exist after the process that created it.

A Uniform Resource Identifier (such as a URL) which remains constant over time. See RFC3986: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt.

A BODS schema object within a person statement used to connect that statement to a person.

A BODS schema object that describes the information known about a natural person at a particular point in time, or from a given submission of information.

Someone who directly holds political office, but also those close to them, such as their spouse and immediate family. The exact legal definition of politically exposed persons (PEPs) may vary between jurisdictions and be specified in relevant legislation.

A group of numbers or letters and numbers which are added to a postal address to assist the sorting of mail.

An attribute of a JSON object. A property has a name and a value.

A person appointed under the trust instrument to protects the interests or wishes of the settlor, providing influence and guidance to the trustee who administers the trust.

Information on where data came from: who created it; when it was made; how it was produced; and original source material.

To make content available to the general public.

Publicly listed companies are companies that offer some or all their shares of stock to the general public to trade on securities markets through a stock exchange.

Able to be shared in a way that is visible to all.

The organisation releasing the data.

The occupation or activity of preparing and making data available to the general public.

An alpha-numeric string which uniquely and persistently refers to a real world individual or entity. For example, a combination of a tax authority and a tax identification number that refers to a single company.

A record exists within a data publisher's system and captures information about an entity, natural person, or relationship.

Noun: An ordered collection of information where a specific piece of information can be easily found.

Verb: To use a value in order to locate a specific piece of information.

Usually refers to a national or sectoral repository of beneficial ownership and/or company registration information.

A legal entity created through an act of official registration, usually resulting in an identifier being assigned to the entity, e.g. a company limited by shares.

The action or process of registering or of being registered.

A public authority or government agency responsible for exercising legal authority over some area of human activity in a regulatory or supervisory capacity. An independent regulatory agency is a regulatory agency that is independent from other branches or arms of the government.

A relationship of ownership or control that exists in the real world between an interested party and an entity.

A statement that describes a relationship of ownership or control that exists between an interested party and an entity.

In a JSON schema, the required keyword indicates a property that must have an entry in order for a statement to validate.

Where countries, competent authorities, and banks identify, assess, and understand the money laundering and terrorist financing risk to which they are exposed, and take the appropriate mitigation measures in accordance with the level of risk.

The first or top-most directory in a hierarchy.

A known source of identifiers. For example, one of the lists held on http://org-id.guide.

A statement made according to one's own testimony or admission.

The person who exercises control over the management of the entity. In the absence of a natural person(s) that exercises control of the entity through ownership interests, the Senior Managing Official can be identified as the Controlling Person(s) of the entity.

The particular format in which schema-compliant data is published. For example, BODS-compliant data can be serialised as a JSON file.

A settlor is a person who, either actually or by operation of law, creates a trust. A settlor of a trust is sometimes also known by other names such as trustor, grantor, or donor.

A unit of ownership interest in a corporation or financial asset that provides for an equal distribution in any profits, if any are declared, in the form of dividends.

A designation applied to a specified type of security, such as common stock or mutual fund unit. Companies that have more than one class of common stock usually identify a given class with alphabetic markers, such as "Class A" shares and "Class B" shares; these carry different rights and privileges.

The shares in a company that a particular person or organisation owns considered together as a unit.

Ownership or control of an entity that meets any threshold level defined within the jurisdiction where the entity is registered.

The place where a statement originated from.

A detailed description of how a product, system, or service is to be designed or made.

An interest in a company giving a person or entity the ability to affect or be affected by the business of the entity in which the stake is held.

BODS schema objects that represent a claim about the state of a person, entity, or relationship at a particular point or period of time.

A BODS schema object used to explain where information in a statement originated from, and to link to supporting information.

A data type used to represent text.

Information organised and stored so that it is easy to access, analyse, and understand.

The person or entity that is being referenced.

Paperwork providing evidence to support a claim.

A surplus is the amount of an asset or resource that exceeds the portion that is utilised. A surplus is used to describe many excess assets including income, profits, capital, and goods.

A keyword or term assigned to a piece of information.

An illegal action in which a person or entity deliberately avoids paying a true tax liability.

The value (usually expressed in a percentage or number of shares) at which a criterion is met that requires disclosure of beneficial ownership for certain means of ownership and control. For example, in the United Kingdom a person is deemed to have "significant control" over a company at a 25% threshold level of ownership.

A sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second.

The process of converting data from one format or structure into another format or structure.

A whole statement, a sub-object, or an individual property that has been transformed by a process. In BODS, transformed content is recorded, along with a description of the process by which it was transformed, in the annotation object.

Transparency in the context of governance refers to processes which are open and honest, possessing the quality of being easy to perceive or detect.

A trust is a legal arrangement or relationship in which a person or entity (“trustee”) owns and manages property or assets, entrusted by a person or legal entity (“settlor”), not for their own use and benefit, but with a fiduciary responsibility to act for the benefit of persons or entities specified (“beneficiaries”), as described under the terms of the trust (e.g. a trust deed).

A trustee is a person who administers the trust for the benefit of a third party ("beneficiaries"), and in whom the legal title of the trust property is vested, either by declaration of the settlor or by operation of law.

We use the term "beneficial owner" in preference to "ultimate beneficial owner", since the terms refer to the same person. See beneficial ownership.

A numeric or alphanumeric string that is associated with a single entity within a given system.

Where a legal person or entity is known to exist but is unknown, it may be represented in the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard by an Entity Statement with Type "unknownEntity".

Not identified.

New, improved, or fixed (refers to data in this instance).

A string of characters that unambiguously identifies a particular resource.

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it.

See data validation.

See data verification.

A specific edition or release of a data schema or piece of software.

The right of shareholders to vote on matters of corporate policy, including decisions on the makeup of the board of directors, issuing securities, initiating corporate actions, and making substantial changes in the corporation's operations.

In relation to; as regards.

Having the right to publish data but not having the right to edit it subsequently. A quality of the immutability of statements.