A Guide to KYC APIs for UBO Verification (2025 Update)
According to Business Registry Insights’ survey of 84 countries, 48% of company registers worldwide offer some publicly available API for retrieving company registry data.
These registers are mostly within the EU and the English-speaking world. However, neither Canada nor the US offers APIs (with the notable exception of Iowa), and open data sets are available in other US states.
What Is an API for UBO Verification?
An API for UBO verification either provides live access to ultimate beneficial ownership or shareholder data from official company registries.
UBO API: These APIs provide access to beneficial ownership registers. Examples include Germany’s Transparency Register’s API and Norway’s Virksomheter.
Company registry API: These catch-all APIs link live to registers, including basic company details as well as beneficial ownership or shareholder details. Examples include:
The UK’s Companies House API, which returns basic company data and Person of Significant Control (PSC) data, or
Singapore’s Business Profile API, which returns basic company registry information and shareholder data, or
Denmark’s CVR API, which returns all company registry data, including basic details, shareholders, and UBO.
The Kyckr API: This third-party company registry API provides live access to official global corporate registry data, including basic, shareholder and UBO data.
There are multiple APIs for UBO verification.
In short: APIs for UBO verification are either exclusively for UBO data, provide both company registry data and shareholder or beneficial ownership data, or provide all data.
Why UBO APIs Are Important
UBO APIs matter because they give financial crime teams a direct line to the ownership data they need – fast, official, and without digging through PDFs.
This data can be fed directly into KYB workflows, alongside sanctions and PEP data, for example, without needing to switch between different portals and data sets.
The Result Is a Patchwork
Some countries publish UBO data, some don’t, and many sit somewhere in the middle.
Some registers, like Italy and Norway, only provide access to nationally regulated obliged entities.
Others, like the UK, provide open access to anyone.
For most EU registers: Access to UBO data via API is restricted to nationally obliged entities. This may change.
It’s a Fragmented API Marketplace
Even among those that do offer APIs, the data that’s available differs from registry to registry.
Ireland and Belgium’s company registries only provide basic, surface-level entity data – not shareholder or UBO registry data.
The UK’s Companies House provides Person of Significant Control (PSC) data, but shareholder data must be manually extracted from company filings in the form of PDFs.
Singapore and New Zealand provide shareholder data, but not UBO data.
Important to know: Denmark leads the world as the only register offering an all-in-one API for basic company registry data, shareholder, and UBO data.
The Ownership Conundrum
Tracing corporate ownership using UBO Verify
Book a demo to learn more
According to the FATF, financial crime teams must use a “multi-pronged” approach to entity verification, using multiple official sources, including shareholder filings and UBO declarations.
Most registers provide one or the other, rarely both.
13% of the world’s registers offer shareholder data via API.
18% offer UBO data via API.
The meaning is clear: At one stage of entity verification, financial crime teams must manually extract data from official filings at company registries.
Which Countries Have a UBO API?
Austria: Limited to those with legitimate interest access, but changes will be implemented in 2026.
Denmark: Available to national obliged entities and those with a legitimate interest.
Estonia: Public, but a tiered access model due to be introduced in 2026.
Finland: Available in the autumn of 2025.
France: Available to overseas entities from non-EU countries.
Germany: Only available to national obliged entities and those with a legitimate interest.
Lithuania: Based on publicly available registry documentation, API access is currently limited to people or entities in Lithuania.
Netherlands: Only currently available to nationally obliged entities with plans to extend legitimate interest soon.
Norway: Available to national obliged entities and those with a legitimate interest.
UK: Public
Slovakia: Limited to nationally obliged entities and competent authorities.
Spain: There is one, but no link to the API or documentation.
Sweden: According to official documentation (Q&As about APIs and Open Data), UBO data will be retrievable via API “at the earliest in the fall of 2025”.
In short: Most EU countries don’t provide UBO API access to third-country obliged entities. This means compliance professionals must verify UBOs using shareholder disclosures.
Which Countries Provide Company Registry Shareholder Data via API?
As we’ve noted already, just 13% of the world’s company registers offer shareholder data via API.
Italy: Only available to entities domiciled in Italy.
Malta: Plans to make public the Full Company Details API. This will retrieve “all details in Basic Company Details API plus involvements, share capital data and a list of document filings using the company registration number". Start date: end of 2025.
New Zealand: The Companies Entity Role Search API has shareholder and other officer data associated with a company.
Singapore: The Business Profile API includes “shareholder and member classification” after recent modifications.
Denmark: As stated already, Denmark’s CVR API returns all company data.
Noticed something? Countries with a UBO API are less likely to offer an API that includes shareholder data.
What’s the Problem?
Multi-pronged verification: Most AML regulations state that beneficial ownership verification requires multiple official sources, including customer disclosures, shareholder data and UBO declarations.
Manual KYB processes: With most registries just offering either UBO data or shareholder data via API – and not both – financial crime teams must spend part of the UBO verification process manually parsing company documents.
Multiple API integrations: Financial crime teams must integrate multiple API integrations from different registers to plug into their KYB workflows, each taking several weeks at least.
The result? An inefficient, time-consuming system that leads to long onboarding times (and high customer attrition), and teams are split over multiple projects.
The Kyckr API delivers global company registry data in real time.
The Kyckr API Connects to 300+ Company Registers
Instead of stitching together dozens of registry integrations, many of which don’t even expose the data you need, Kyckr provides a single access point to global company registries, via our online portal or the Kyckr API.
Financial crime teams are linked, in real time, to over 300 company registries, as opposed to databases.
Even when the company register doesn’t provide UBO or shareholder data via API, Kyckr extracts shareholder data from company filings at the registry (where applicable) and calculates UBOs based on those percentages.
Book a demo to verify UBOs in seconds automatically.