Beneficial owner

A beneficial owner is the individual who stands behind a customer: the natural person who ultimately owns it or controls it, however many companies or trusts sit in between. Under the Prevention of Money-laundering Act, 2002 and the record rules made under it, a reporting entity must identify that person before it deals with the customer.

The test is a percentage. Under rule 9(3) of the Maintenance of Records Rules as amended in 2023, the beneficial owner of a company is a natural person with more than ten per cent of its shares, capital or profits. The same figure applies to a partnership, fifteen per cent to an unincorporated association, and ten per cent or more to a beneficiary of a trust. An ordinary operating company is not itself a reporting entity, so the test is applied to it by its bank or intermediary, using records the company supplies. Where the answer given to a bank differs from the company's own register, the difference is itself a finding.