Connecting ownership data: Practical pathways to tackle cross-border financial crime
Executive summary
Transnational corruption is routinely enabled by anonymously owned companies. Seventy percent of major corruption cases in recent decades have involved legal vehicles whose true owners were concealed, often through cross-border structures. [1] Illicit financial flows (IFFs) move through complex ownership chains that span jurisdictions, distorting markets, enabling tax abuse, weakening financial systems, and diverting public resources.
In response, over the past decade more than 100 jurisdictions have established beneficial ownership (BO) registers. This represents major progress toward increasing transparency around who ultimately owns and controls companies and other legal vehicles. With more BO information being collected now than ever before, the next challenge is to create impact through the use of this information – at scale and across borders – to strengthen revenue mobilisation, protect public resources, counter corruption, and enhance financial integrity.
The Taskforce on Interoperable Beneficial Ownership Data (hereinafter “the Taskforce”) was convened by Open Ownership, the Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime, and the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) Risk Intelligence. It aimed to identify solutions to this challenge by focusing specifically on the issue of interoperability – the ability to connect and understand information from multiple sources.
Over a one-year period, the Taskforce brought together over 50 leading private-sector innovators, policymakers, international organisations, and public authorities to identify practical and scalable pathways to enable safe and effective cross-border use of BO data. This report sets out the Taskforce’s findings and recommendations, drawing on structured deliberations among its experts. It is structured to reflect the progression of the Taskforce’s work, beginning by clarifying key concepts before examining practical scenarios for implementation at global, regional, and bilateral levels, and identifying recommendations to move forward.
Defining interoperability
Interoperability is an increasingly used term, but among the Taskforce and its members’ networks, there was a lack of clarity in what it means in practice, and therefore what problems improving it could be expected to solve.
In general terms, interoperability refers to the capacity information systems have to interconnect, and the extent to which data from different sources can be readily shared, exchanged, and interpreted consistently, even when underlying legal frameworks, technical infrastructures, and institutional arrangements are not identical. A central contribution of the Taskforce is clarifying what interoperability of BO information means in practice, based on three interdependent dimensions:
- Semantic interoperability: Ensuring data can be interpreted consistently and clearly across jurisdictions.
- Technological interoperability: Providing the infrastructure that enables machine-readable and reliable access to information, and allows for flexible alignment with privacy and data protection frameworks.
- Governance interoperability: Establishing international frameworks, legal clarity, trust mechanisms, and sustainable financing that allow jurisdictions to cooperate and maintain interoperability over time.
These dimensions must advance together. Technical interfaces cannot compensate for poor source data or lack of semantic alignment, and governance alone cannot deliver impact without reliable technical implementation. Sustainable resourcing at domestic and international levels is key to driving progress.
Key insights
The Taskforce’s work affirms that advancing the interoperability of BO information is both achievable and necessary, but it is not an end in itself. Interoperability is only one part of the puzzle, and access to BO information – especially from foreign registers – and how information can be accessed, are also key to enabling BO data to deliver real-world impact.
The work of the Taskforce highlights the following key points:
- Access remains a pressing issue. Interoperability is a bridge between transparency and impact, but ensuring efficient access to reliable BO information – particularly across jurisdictions – is a crucial foundation. Controlled, purpose-based access models are necessary to balance transparency, privacy, and effective enforcement.
- Effective domestic registers are foundational. Interoperability cannot compensate for incomplete, inaccessible, low-quality, or poorly structured data. Effective central BO registers must be digital, structured, user centred, supported by robust verification processes, and aligned with national policy priorities.
- User needs must drive reform. Tax officials, procurement authorities, financial intelligence units (FIUs), journalists, and compliance professionals have distinct but overlapping needs. Reforms must prioritise usability – including through machine-readable data and application programming interface (API) access – to enable effective data use.
- Semantic alignment is essential for cross-border use. Differences in definitions of beneficial ownership currently limit the ability to compare and link data across jurisdictions. Interoperability efforts must prioritise greater alignment in how key concepts are defined and implemented.
- Data in BO registers must be understood in relation to other information when developing pathways to advance interoperability. Data from BO registers is most powerful when connected with company registers, shareholder information, land registers, and registers covering information on government licensing and procurement. Interoperability efforts should therefore consider BO registers as part of a broader ownership information ecosystem encompassing other sources, such as legal ownership and shareholder registers.
- Effective ongoing governance of interoperability initiatives is critical to their success. Trust, legal clarity, and sustained institutional commitment determine whether technical solutions endure.
By focusing on improving access to BO information, aligning meaning, strengthening technology, and embedding durable governance frameworks, governments can ensure that BO data delivers real-world results: enabling authorities to collect more revenue, prevent financial leakages, and spend public funds more effectively.
Future scenarios identified to realise interoperability
Through the Taskforce’s examination of the three dimensions of interoperability, it became clear that in addition to focusing on improving interoperability of BO data, there was a pressing need to improve access to BO information for relevant user groups, in particular to information from foreign registers. This was considered a prerequisite to achieving meaningful interoperability. To improve access, and to translate interoperability into practice, the Taskforce identified five possible future scenarios:
- Scenario 1: A global international register connecting BO data from multiple jurisdictions into a single system.
- Scenario 2: An international search platform enabling users to query national registers through a single access point, without centralising the underlying data.
- Scenario 3: Coordinated bilateral or multilateral exchange between competent authorities using agreed specifications and secure channels.
- Scenario 4: Register-to-register exchange on direct interests to understand ownership chains spanning borders.
- Scenario 5: Multiple registers publish BO data in a common structured format, enabling aggregation and analysis by users.
These scenarios are not mutually exclusive. Each makes trade-offs between the investment needed to create and sustain it and the depth and coverage of the interoperable BO information it delivers. While some scenarios are viewed as more pragmatic, others could deliver additional value if stakeholders decide to invest in them.
Recommendations to advance interoperability
1. Enhance global policy frameworks to support interoperability
International standard-setting bodies and multilateral institutions should explicitly incorporate interoperability objectives into anti-money laundering (AML)/combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) and anti-corruption frameworks. This includes providing guidance on minimum datasets, common identifiers, and cross-border usability, ensuring that transparency commitments translate into operational alignment.
2. Strengthen domestic BO registers as foundational building blocks for transnational interoperability
National governments should prioritise digitised, structured, and user-centred BO registers for legal vehicles that are accessible to relevant data users and designed to support high-impact use cases, such as tax oversight and procurement integrity. Investment in data quality and usability is essential.
3. Conduct user research to inform the design of registers and interoperability initiatives that meet user needs
Registry authorities and reform partners should undertake structured engagement with tax agencies, procurement bodies, FIUs, and private-sector users to identify concrete cross-border use cases. Interoperability solutions should respond directly to defined operational needs.
4. Devise and implement new approaches to improve access to BO information for users, while balancing privacy and data protection needs
Nuanced solutions are required to enable key actors, including law enforcement and other government agencies, businesses, and civil society to be able to access BO data in conformance with privacy and data sovereignty laws. New tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed ledger technology (DLT), can be leveraged to implement layered access to data in more nuanced ways that maintain compliance with privacy and data protection frameworks.
5. Develop new tools to help translate policy frameworks into usable data
Governments and international partners should leverage key tools that are successfully used in other sectors to advance semantic alignment. These include developing a minimum high-value dataset (MHVDS) of BO data fields necessary to enable data use; developing and maintaining a global BO data dictionary to strengthen semantic alignment; and making use of existing data standards, such as the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS), and relevant International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards. [2]
6. Leverage existing solutions to enable interoperability where BO data is already available
Well-established foundations for interoperability – including consistent use of identifiers, well-documented APIs or bulk-data access mechanisms, and use of metadata to assist interpretation – should be applied within the datasets in source registers.
7. Establish and pilot (sub)regional interoperability initiatives
Regional bodies and willing jurisdictions should launch targeted pilots linked to concrete use cases, such as procurement risk screening or cross-border tax audits, to demonstrate value and refine governance models before scaling globally.
8. Embed interoperability as a core component of beneficial ownership transparency (BOT) reforms undertaken to support anti-corruption and public financial management outcomes
Governments and development partners should integrate BO interoperability objectives into reforms focused on domestic resource mobilisation, procurement systems, anti-corruption strategies, and digital public infrastructure. Interoperability should be positioned as an enabler of measurable outcomes.
9. Strengthen funding and financing mechanisms to enable pilots and scaling of interoperability initiatives
National governments, regional institutions, development banks, and donors should establish sustainable financing models, including pooled funding, cost-sharing arrangements, and strategic public-private collaboration, to maintain and evolve interoperability infrastructure beyond initial project cycles. There should be increased coordination among funders on supporting this work in order to better foster international interoperable BOT architecture.
Taskforce membership
The co-conveners are grateful to each Taskforce member for their valuable insights and contributions to this project.
| Lilit Aleksanyan | Steve Lamb | Chris Taggart |
| María Cecilia Alvarez Bollea | Friedrich Lindenberg | Alexandre Taymans |
| Jennifer Anderson Lewis | Kari Lucas | Irene Tello Arista |
| Victoria Ayer | Daniel Luis P. Macalino | Kirbee Tibayan |
| Graham Barrow | Purity Mukami Kinyamu | Zachary Tvarozna |
| Nancy Camacho Díaz | Julia Murat | Rico van der Veen |
| Camilo Cetina | Denis Musa | Matthew Van Buskirk |
| Simon Cherpka | Richard Nash | Jean Villedieu |
| Luis M. Cifuentes | Paco Nathan | Joanna Wands |
| Ted Datta | Mwalo Opiyo | Khairil Yusof |
| Ficoal Dong | Donna M. Pare | |
| Mihály Fazekas | Luis Enrique Pelcastre Vera | |
| Felix Goodenough | Ernst Pienaar | |
| Donovan Guedes | Anna Powell-Smith | |
| Matias Federico Guggenheim | Michele Riccardi | |
| Norm Hodne | Cheryl Ringor | |
| Russell Jurney | Emanuel Santos | |
| Michelle Kendler-Kretsch | Roman Sevec | |
| Olivier Kraft | Ljubinka Slaveska | |
| Ranjan Kumar Mallick | Roberta Solis Ribeiro Martins | |
| Guillermo Lagarda | David Szakonyi |
Co-conveners and key contributors
Open Ownership
| Miranda Evans |
| Julie Rialet |
| Louise Russell-Prywata |
| Thom Townsend |
Expert consultant
| Andon Rumenov |
London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) Risk Intelligence
| Beatrice Marinoiu |
| Ruth Helena Alves da Mota |
| Marie-Adélaïde de Nicolay |
| Anna Rosenberg |
| Che Sidanius |
Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime
| Che Sidanius |
| John Cusack |
| Lana Brandorne |
Footnotes
[1] Emily M. Halter, Robert M. Harrison, Ji Won Park, J.C. Sharman, Emile Van Der Does De Willebois, The puppet masters: How the corrupt use legal structures to hide stolen assets and what to do about it (Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative, 2011), http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/784961468152973030.
[2] Open Ownership, “Beneficial Ownership Data Standard”, n.d., https://www.openownership.org/en/topics/beneficial-ownership-data-standard/; ISO, “Standards”, n.d., https://www.iso.org/standards.html.