Effective access to beneficial ownership information

Conclusion

Designing effective access regimes is essential to ensuring BOT reforms are impactful. Effective regimes will typically enable complementary user groups to access usable BO information effectively and in a diversity of ways, in order to advance a jurisdiction’s policy goals. Clearly defining these goals is a foundational step to guide decisions about laws, rules, and systems to access BO information. To implement BOT reforms responsibly and sustainably, access regimes should strike a balance between transparency and privacy, rooted in the domestic context, national legal frameworks, international standards, and user research. User-centred approaches to designing access regimes help ground access provisions in evidence about users’ needs to maximise the impact of reforms. This information should provide a solid foundation from which to effectively design layers of access, articulating who has access to information and for what purpose, as well as any authenticating permission and appropriate safeguards based on the amount of information that can be accessed and how flexibly it can be used. Monitoring and documenting BO data use is necessary to assess the effectiveness of an access regime, as well as supporting iteration and cross-country learning about effective BOT reforms.