ultimate beneficial owner (UBO)
An ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) is the natural person who ultimately owns or controls a company. Under the UK Money Laundering Regulations 2017 that means anyone holding, directly or indirectly, more than 25% of the shares or voting rights, or who otherwise exercises control over its management.
Payments regulation wants to know who, in the end, benefits from a business receiving money. A company can be owned by another company, which is owned by a holding entity, which is owned by a person; the UBO is that person. The Money Laundering Regulations define a beneficial owner of a body corporate as an individual with more than 25% of its shares or voting rights, or who otherwise controls it, and Companies House runs a parallel public register of people with significant control.
For a software platform, UBO identification is the part of onboarding that cannot be done from a company number alone. The regulated acquiring partner has to identify and usually verify each UBO, which means collecting names, dates of birth and addresses from people who may not be the person filling in the form. A good in-product flow uses the public PSC register to pre-fill what it can, tells the customer plainly why the details are needed, and lets a director complete the step later rather than blocking everything on it.
What to watch: ownership held through nominees, trusts or foreign entities takes longer and may need documents; and a change of owner after onboarding has to be reported, so the platform's customer record needs a way to capture it.