What is the ultimate beneficial owner trustee?

Asked by: Dr. Flavio Frami  |  Last update: January 15, 2026
Score: 4.6/5 (45 votes)

What is an ultimate beneficial owner or UBO? FATF defines a UBO as “the natural person(s) who ultimately owns or controls a customer and/or the natural person on whose behalf a transaction is being conducted.

Who qualifies as the Ultimate Beneficial Owner of a trust?

The settlor, the trustee, the protector, the beneficiaries and any natural person exercising ultimate control or influence over a trust by means of ownership or by other means should be all identified as UBOs.

Who is considered the UBO of a trust?

An Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) is any natural person that ultimately owns or controls the customer and/or the natural person on whose behalf a transaction or activity is being conducted.

Who is considered an Ultimate Beneficial Owner?

A UBO is the one with ultimate control over the business. They are a natural person who owns or controls, directly or indirectly, at least 25% of the company's share capital or at least 25% of the voting rights or have the right to appoint or dismiss a majority of the managers or directors.

What is a trustee beneficial owner?

Under financial regulations, a beneficial owner is considered anyone with a stake of 25% or more in a legal entity or corporation. Beneficial owners can also be considered anyone with a significant role in the management or direction of those entities, or any trusts that own 25% or more of an entity.

Who are the Beneficial Owners of a Trust for the Corporate Transparency Act?

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Who qualifies as a beneficial owner?

A beneficial owner of a reporting company (as any entity required to file a BOI report is called) is defined as any individual who, directly or indirectly, either exercises substantial control over a reporting company or owns or controls at least 25 percent of the reporting company's ownership interests.

What is the difference between a trustee and a beneficial owner?

With an implied trust, however, mere trusteeship may be imposed upon someone who thinks they are the outright owner; meanwhile an individual who thought they had no interest in an asset may, according to the law of equity, be the beneficial owner and who is subject to tax.

What is the difference between owner and ultimate beneficial owner?

A beneficial owner is someone who enjoys the benefits of ownership, such as profits or control, even if the ownership is indirect. In contrast, a UBO is the person or entity at the very top of the ownership chain who ultimately exercises control over the company or its assets.

What are the risks of ultimate beneficial owner?

Overall, while some reasons for hiding beneficial ownership may be legitimate, such as privacy concerns, others like tax evasion and money laundering are illegal and pose significant risks to the financial system and society as a whole.

What is an example of a UBO?

Essentially, a UBO is the person who ultimately profits from a business and its transactions. An example of complex ultimate beneficial ownership would be a situation where a person holds shares in a company through a network of trusts or shell companies, which makes it difficult to determine true ownership.

How to identify UBO of a trust?

Where the trust has a corporate trustee, the company extract will contain the shareholders. If the corporate trustee is owned by other companies, the shareholders of those companies must also be reviewed, to determine the ultimate beneficial owner of the corporate trustee.

Who qualifies as the ultimate beneficiary of a trust?

A beneficiary of trust is the individual or group of individuals for whom a trust was created. The person who creates a trust also determines the trust beneficiary and appoints a trustee to manage the trust in the beneficiary's best interests.

How do you identify an UBO?

How is an Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) Identified?
  1. Verify the company's legitimacy. Using reliable documents and data sources, gather and verify key information about the company, such as its name, address, and list of top management.
  2. Assess the ownership chain. ...
  3. Review UBO data. ...
  4. Conduct KYC verification.

What is the Ultimate Beneficial Owner rule?

While jurisdictions may interpret the specifics of this definition differently, it is commonly agreed that an ultimate beneficial owner or UBO owns more than 25% of a company's shares, or controls more than 25% of the voting rights. However, determining the UBO of a company is not always a straightforward task.

How to calculate ultimate beneficial ownership?

Beneficial Ownership Percentage is calculated by dividing the number of Ordinary Shares and Share Equivalents of which a person is a Beneficial Owner as of a specific date by the total number of Ordinary Shares outstanding at that moment.

Is the UBO register mandatory?

Companies and legal entities must register 1 or more UBOs. UBOs (Ultimate Beneficial Owners) are the owners or the persons who are in charge of a company. The UBO register helps to prevent financial and economic crimes such as money laundering, financing terrorism, tax fraud, and corruption.

How many percent do you need to be ultimate beneficial owner?

The definition of who constitutes a UBO varies between jurisdiction, but generally a UBO is defined as an individual who holds a minimum of 10-25% (dependent on jurisdiction) of capital or voting rights in the underlying entity.

What is the difference between a beneficiary and a beneficial owner?

A beneficiary is someone designated to receive money, property, or other benefits of assets via a trust or will. The difference between beneficial owner vs. beneficiary is that beneficiaries usually need to have ownership (either legal or beneficial) over the assets they benefit from.

What information is required of the ultimate beneficial owner?

It will also be determined whether they have direct or indirect ownership of the business. After this, the beneficial owner is identified and verified, including data on the percentage of shares they own, their ownership stake and how much management control they possess.

Is a trustee a beneficial owner of a trust?

For example, in the case of securities, the legal owner is the person whose name appears in the shareholder register, who holds title for the benefit of the beneficial owner, and in the case of a trust, the trustee holds legal ownership of the trust property, for the benefit of the beneficiary.

Who is the Ultimate Beneficial Owner of a trust?

A 'beneficial owner' is always a natural person. In the instance where a legal entity fulfils the role of a beneficial owner, the natural person/s who ultimately benefit/s from the legal entity will need to be recorded as the beneficial owner/s of the trust.

What is the purpose of ultimate beneficial ownership?

Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) legislation has been put into place to give banks and corporates clarity on who they're doing business with. There is an industry-wide expectation for banks and corporations to know the individuals they do business with.

Who has more power, a trustee or beneficiary?

A trustee typically has the most control in running their trust. They are granted authority by their grantor to oversee and distribute assets according to terms set out in their trust document, while beneficiaries merely reap its benefits without overseeing its operations themselves.

Why shouldn't a beneficiary be trustee?

Naming the same person as trustee and beneficiary can be problematic. Not only can it lead to a trustee and beneficiary conflict of interest, but it can make it difficult for the trustee to uphold their duty to treat all beneficiaries equally.

What is the role of the owner trustee?

An owner trust is a relationship where a trustee holds legal title to the aircraft for the benefit of a third party, who is commonly called the “trustor” or “beneficiary.” The trustee then leases or licenses the aircraft back to the trustor/benefi- ciary or a third party, as the trustee does not operate the aircraft.