Beneficial Ownership Verification in the US: A Compliance Guide for 2026

In March 2025, FinCEN switched off beneficial ownership reporting for domestic US companies, eliminating the requirement for more than 99.9% of the entities that had been due to report. The public data required to verify beneficial owners disappeared. 

This is the contradiction facing every US obliged entity in 2026. Customer due diligence, risk assessment, and obligations to insurers, partners, and investors all demand that you know who ultimately owns and controls the company in front of you. But the federal register built to tell you has been all but emptied. 

US regulated firms must bake a cake with no ingredients.

The US ownership discovery landscape in 2026

Three forces now pull against each other: 

• The first is the exemption. On 21 March 2025, FinCEN removed the requirement for domestic companies to report their beneficial owners and has not enforced it since. 

• The second is everything the exemption left standing. Firms must still run customer due diligence, still assess risk, still answer to insurers, partners, and investors. 

• The third is enforcement, tightening while disclosure loosens. The Treasury's 2026 National Money Laundering Risk Assessment traced US shell companies laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking, cybercrime, and fraud. The Trump administration is economically nationalist, simultaneously reluctant to burden domestic firms, while desiring control over who moves money through them. 

On 16 December 2025, the Eleventh Circuit held that the Corporate Transparency Act “does not facially violate the Fourth Amendment" and is therefore constitutional. The law that underpins beneficial ownership reporting is sound and settled. What changed in 2025 and 2026 was not the law, but FinCEN's willingness to enforce parts of it, and that willingness can return as quickly as it left.

What is a beneficial owner in the US?

Under 31 CFR § 1010.230(d), a beneficial owner is a natural person who either: 

• Owns 25% or more of an entity, directly or indirectly, through any "contract, arrangement, understanding, relationship or otherwise"; or 

• Controls, manages, or directs it, a test the regulation says captures senior officers such as the CEO, CFO, COO, managing member, general partner, president, vice president, or treasurer. 

In brief, a beneficial owner is a human who owns a quarter or more of a company or runs it. 

What regulations govern US UBO verification?

The rules are clear. 

1. Beneficial ownership verification is a requirement.

§ 1010.230 requires “covered financial institutions” to “identify and verify beneficial owners of legal entity customers”. 

2. It happens at onboarding, once.

Sub-paragraph (b) requires verification "at the time a new account is opened". 

On 13 February 2026, FinCEN went further: an exceptive relief order (FIN-2026-R001) freed institutions from re-verifying a customer's owners every time that customer opens another account. Verify once, at the start, and again only when risk or new facts demand it. 

3. It is a risk-based model.

The regulation makes it plain: “Verify the identity of each beneficial owner identified to the covered financial institution, according to risk-based procedures to the extent reasonable and practicable." 

In short, the ownership disclosures of high-risk customers must be cross-referenced with what the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) calls “independent, reliable” sources. 

4. Specific data is needed.

The bare minimum – according to 31 CFR § 1020.220(a)(2)(i)(A): Name, date of birth, address, ID number (tax number for US citizens, passport number for non-US citizens). 

What kind of evidence is needed: 31 CFR § 1020.220(a)(2)(ii) requires the use of “documents, non-documentary methods, or a combination of both methods”. 

Records must be kept for five years after the account closes (for credit-card accounts, five years after closure or dormancy), per 31 CFR § 1020.220(a)(3)(ii). 

5. OFAC's 50% Rule – and why it matters

The Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) 50% Rule states that a company is treated as sanctioned if blocked persons own it 50% or more, even when the company's own name appears on no sanctions list. 

Breaking its rules brings fines and, in serious cases, criminal charges. 

OFAC's own guidance defines the standard: "entities owned 50 percent or more in the aggregate" by one or more blocked persons are themselves blocked. Two sanctioned owners holding a quarter each still trigger the rule together, and ownership counted through layered holding companies counts too. 

In other words, UBO verification cannot stop at national borders. A sanctions name-screen alone only catches parties already on a list. Finding the real owner behind a company means tracing ownership through every layer and every jurisdiction the chain crosses.

The problem: there is no publicly available US UBO data

The information required to identify and verify beneficial owners of US legal entities is not publicly available.

Not from the Secretary of State (SOC) offices, nor FinCEN’s beneficial ownership register. This is due to the federal government’s March 2025 reporting exemption to US firms. 

The problem compounds when you consider the fact that US states do not require legal entities to disclose their shareholders, which is how American firms’ European counterparts verify beneficial owners in the absence of publicly available UBO data, following the CJEU’s 2022 ruling.

What alternative data sources exist for US ownership discovery?

There is no single source that answers the question. In practice, you assemble the picture from several, and only the first is designed to tell you who the owner is. The rest confirm, contradict, or fail to reach that far. 

• Customer self-certification is the primary mechanism. Under §1010.230(b), the person opening the account signs a certification, on FinCEN's model Appendix A form, naming the beneficial owners. Absent a red flag, the institution may rely on it. 

• State business registries. These confirm that a company exists, when it was formed, its registered agent, and, where a state chooses to require them, officer or manager names. However, as FinCEN itself concedes, coverage is inconsistent and rarely reaches true beneficial ownership. 

• FinCEN's BOI database is now a narrow tool. Financial institutions can still request access to support CDD, with the reporting company's consent, but since the rollback, it holds only foreign reporting companies. 

• IRS EIN and TIN verification supplies the identifying number CIP requires. There is no public lookup; the institution takes the number from the customer and validates it through the TIN-match process. 

• OFAC's SDN and sanctions lists screen the owners you have already found. They do not discover ownership. They merely tell you whether a name, once you have it, is blocked, which is what the 50% Rule turns on. 

• SEC EDGAR covers public companies. For entities with SEC-registered securities, it yields officer, director, and sometimes beneficial-ownership disclosures, such as Schedule 13D and 13G filings. 

Third-party investigation is where higher-risk cases go. Court records, litigation history, adverse media, and commercial data aggregators fill the gap that public infrastructure leaves, because, as FinCEN's own record shows, that infrastructure often cannot answer the question on its own.

What live, global company data can do

A U.S. company's owners rarely stop at the U.S. border 

The GVA Capital case shows why. 

In 2017, Suleiman Kerimov's family set up Heritage Trust, a Delaware trust, to hold his U.S. money. The trust owned two offshore firms: Prosperity Investments, a Guernsey partnership, and Definition Services, a British Virgin Islands company. In 2016, Prosperity paid $20 million into a Delaware fund run by GVA Capital. The money bought Kerimov a stake in Luminar, a self-driving car firm. 

In 2018, the U.S. sanctioned Kerimov. Lawyers warned GVA Capital: don't move the stake. GVA moved it anyway, from Prosperity to Definition Services, Prosperity's sister firm under the same trust. The paperwork changed. The real owner did not. 

On 12 June 2025, OFAC fined GVA Capital $216 million and made the standard plain: firms cannot hide behind "formalistic ownership arrangements that obscure the true parties in interest". That standard matches the §1010.230's own test, which counts anyone who owns 25% or more, "directly or indirectly, through any contract, arrangement, understanding, relationship or otherwise." Both rules point past the name on the paperwork to the person who benefits. 

An honest limit 

This case was not a data problem. GVA's own leaders met Kerimov in France and knew who they were dealing with. No registry search fixes that kind of wilful blindness. 

Where the data does the work 

For a firm without inside knowledge, the task is narrower but real: does the Guernsey partner exist, who runs it, and does any thread lead back to a name you already know? 

That thread is traceable, and not just by investigators with subpoena power. Prosperity Investments turns up by name in the Pandora Papers, sitting in ICIJ's public Offshore Leaks Database. The link between Heritage Trust, Prosperity, and Definition Services was mapped using leaked records, court filings, and company registries. 

In other words, a domestic check stops at the first foreign name it meets. Live, cross-border company data follows it. 

Frequently asked questions

Do US companies still have to verify beneficial owners in 2026? 

Yes. FinCEN's March 2025 rollback removed the reporting obligation for domestic companies, but the duty to verify beneficial owners at onboarding, under 31 CFR §1010.230, is unchanged. Customer due diligence, risk assessment, and OFAC screening all still require you to know who ultimately owns and controls a customer. 

What is a beneficial owner under US law? 

A beneficial owner is a natural person who either owns 25% or more of an entity, directly or indirectly, or controls, manages, or directs it, such as a senior officer. The definition sits in 31 CFR §1010.230(d). In short, a human who owns a quarter or more of a company or runs it. 

Where can I find beneficial ownership data on a US company? 

There is no single public source. FinCEN's BOI database now holds only foreign reporting companies, and most state registries do not record shareholders. In practice, you rely on customer self-certification, state business registries, IRS TIN validation, SEC EDGAR for public companies, and third-party investigation for higher-risk cases. 

Is the FinCEN beneficial ownership register still usable? 

Barely, for domestic discovery. Financial institutions can still request access to support CDD, with the reporting company's consent, but since the March 2025 rollback, the register is populated only by foreign reporting companies. For verifying the owners of a US company, it is close to empty. 

What is the OFAC 50% Rule? 

Under OFAC's 50% Rule, a company is treated as sanctioned if one or more blocked persons own 50% or more of it in aggregate, even when the company itself appears on no sanctions list. Ownership counted through layered holding companies counts too, so a name-screen alone is not enough. 

Did the courts strike down the Corporate Transparency Act? 

No. In December 2025, the Eleventh Circuit held the Corporate Transparency Act constitutional. The law that underpins beneficial ownership reporting is settled. What changed was FinCEN's willingness to enforce parts of it, an administrative decision that can be reversed as quickly as it was made.