An Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) is the real person who ultimately benefits from a company's activities, regardless of how many corporate layers exist between them and the company. Identifying UBOs is critical for anti-money laundering compliance and corporate transparency.
Under UK law, the PSC (Person with Significant Control) regime requires companies to identify individuals who hold more than 25% of shares or voting rights, or who exercise significant influence. However, the UBO concept goes further — tracing ownership through chains of companies to find the natural person at the top.
Complex ownership structures involving offshore companies, nominee shareholders, and trust arrangements can make UBO identification difficult. The GLEIF (Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation) ownership data helps trace cross-border corporate relationships, while PSC registers cover UK-registered entities.
BORSCH.AI combines PSC data (7.3M records), GLEIF ownership chains (121K LEI signals), and corporate network analysis to map beneficial ownership across 5.9M UK companies, including cross-referencing with offshore data from ICIJ (Panama/Paradise/Pandora Papers).