To comply with the Anti‐Money Laundering/Counter‐Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) legislation, we need to collect and verify information about each beneficial owner.
A beneficial owner is an individual who ultimately ‘owns’ or ‘controls’ an entity.
This includes the individual, or individuals, who directly or indirectly, ‘owns’ 25% or more of the entity, or ‘controls’ the entity through decision making including an appointor, protector, trustee, director or a senior managing official.
A beneficial owner is always a natural person. Therefore, if another entity is a beneficial owner of the entity (including corporate trustees), the beneficial owner requirement (defined above) must be applied to that respective entity and so on until a natural person or persons can be identified.
Types of beneficial ownership
For the purpose of determining beneficial ownership:
- ‘Owns’ means owning 25% or more of the entity. This can be directly (such as through shareholdings) or indirectly (such as through another company’s ownership) or a combination of both direct and indirect holdings
- ‘Controls' includes control as a result of, or by means of, trusts, agreements, arrangements, understandings and practices, and includes exercising control through the capacity to determine decisions about financial and operating policies.