Company reports can help meet your ‘Know Your Client’ obligations for money laundering purposes. Our ‘UK Company Reports’ give you the information that you need to verify the company’s existence and identify the individuals or beneficial owners behind it.
We can also undertake overseas company verification with the Registrar in Cayman, a report on a company in China, a property search in Spain, to financial statements on a company in Romania. We have access to more than 50 million companies worldwide. These worldwide company reports also feature credit worthiness information helping you decide on the acceptance of the retainer.
UK AML Business Reports on a pay as you go basis, contact us for a competitive quote
Under the Money Laundering Regulations firms are required to verify businesses, who are the customer and take adequate measures to verify the identity of the individuals that control them. The first stage in this process is to verify the business and to obtain evidence that the business exists at the given location. Businesses can be as simple as a Sole Trader or as complicated as a large Corporate Group with complex Parent Companies and Subsidiary Company structures.
Different rules apply to different styles and levels of businesses. For a smaller Private Limited Company you have to satisfy yourself that the company exists and is bona-fide, this can be done with a Registry check. Once this is done you will then need to identify who the Directors and Shareholders are at the Company to establish if there are any Beneficial Owners.
Beneficial Owners are individuals who own more than 25% of the shares or voting rights in a Company or over 25% Share of the Capital or Profits in a Partnership. It is these Beneficial Owners, and/or Controlling Directors or Partners that would be the subject of the final individual AML check and certification.
Much of the time, effort and resources on business AML checks by the obliged entities goes in to researching who actually owns and controls the business, it is only when this task is performed that you can identify and verify the identities the correct individuals.
SmartSearch is the first platform of its type to enable you to research a business, verify the structure, identify the Beneficial Owners, Directors, Partners or Proprietors, and perform an AML check on the appropriate individual’s details, all in one place, producing the all-important AML certificate.
SmartSearch is the only AML Platform of its type where you can perform both Business and Consumer AML checks. Other unique features include email alerts to MLROs when Sanction, PEP or SIP matches are encountered; also included is ongoing monitoring of all client records, they include;
- Business and Corporate Checks
- Incorporated Business Verification
- Un-incorporated Business Verification
- VAT Registration Verification
- CCL, CCJ and Bankruptcy Registrations
- Beneficial Owner Details
- Directors Home Address Details
You can verify beneficial owners and those who control the entity by the way of a simple selection process producing a single AML report for the business.
In order to replicate what the Business SmartSearch produces many regulated and obliged entities use a plethora of information sources such as, Companies House Records, Public Records, Online Directory Publications and Look-up Services. They then collate the information from these disparate sources on their prospective new client business, in order to identify the various Proprietors, Partners, Directors, Shareholders and Beneficial Owners who may be the subject of AML verification. This process can be time consuming in terms of staff and customer time, making it a costly exercise in terms of resources. This manual process will typically take between 1 and 2 weeks and up to one hour to complete.
Over seas Company Business Reports
We can obtain reports of company registries for companies in most countries. Our most popular requests are for documents in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Hong Kong. Price is dependent on the individual registry. This reports also include credit scoring, sanction searches on the company and the directors and beneficial owners where identified.