What is the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS)?¶
The Beneficial Ownership Data Standard (BODS) provides a common way of organising and sharing information about who owns, controls and benefits from companies and other legal vehicles, independent of any particular definition of «beneficial owner». It is designed so that beneficial ownership networks (corporate structures) can be easily revealed. Its aim is to make combining and analysing data from different sources easier, cheaper and quicker.
BODS is not a regulatory framework or an industry standard.
BODS is a technical standard for structuring data about beneficial ownership.
Standards such as the FATF requirements or the EITI Standard mention beneficial ownership but they are not technical standards. They provide normative guidance for policy-makers and industry actors, aiming to shape best practice in government and industry.
BODS offers a structure for sharing beneficial ownership information.
Information about beneficial ownership encompasses:
Details of legal vehicles, such as companies and trusts
Share ownership
The voting rights attached to different share classes
Details which identify individual people
Details of intermediate legal vehicles in an ownership chain
And more
This information can be scattered across companies’ annual reports, their founding articles, filings to regulatory authorities, and contracts. BODS provides fields and field sets into which this information can be organised and represented as data when it is exported.
BODS is not a format for storing beneficial ownership data.
BODS has a specified data format.
The data schema describes the organisation of these fields and field sets. The schema is defined in a popular structured data format called JSON.
Its fields are well-defined.
Every field and object in the BODS schema has a clear definition. For example, here are some fields that would be used to describe a company:
Title |
Description |
Type |
Format |
Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
name |
string |
|||
Nombre de la entidad |
El nombre declarado de la entidad. |
|||
jurisdiction |
object |
|||
Jurisdicción |
La jurisdicción donde esta entidad fue inscripta o creada (para entidades legales e inscriptas y estructuras jurídicas). O la jurisdicción del estado (para estados y órganos estatales). See Jurisdiction |
|||
jurisdiction/name |
string |
Required |
||
Nombre |
Nombre de la jurisdicción |
|||
jurisdiction/code |
string |
|||
Código de país o subdivisión |
El código de país de 2 letras (ISO 3166-1) o el código de subdivisión (ISO 3166-2) para la jurisdicción. |
|||
foundingDate |
string |
date |
||
Fecha de fundación |
La fecha en la que esta entidad fue fundada, creada o inscripta. La fecha DEBE indicarse en formato AAAA-MM-DD. Si no se pueden indicar un mes o una fecha precisos, puede redondearse el valor al primer día del (primer) mes. Este redondeo DEBERÍA mencionarse en la guía complementaria (como una política de publicaciones o una guía de uso de datos). |
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Alongside field-level definitions, Modelling requirements define how different scenarios should be represented in BODS data.
BODS data can be transferred and interpreted.
JSON format facilitates computerised access to and analysis of BODS data, whilst also being human-readable. JSON is a well-supported format for applications which import, export or process data.
BODS data reveals beneficial ownership networks.
When beneficial owners indirectly control companies, it is valuable to understand the networks of control. BODS has a network-first design. It organises information into three categories: that about entities, about people, and about the relationships between them.
BODS data can therefore be processed with ease to reveal networks.