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 |
|||
Название субъекта |
Объявленное название данного субъекта. |
|||
jurisdiction |
object |
|||
Юрисдикция |
Юрисдикция, в которой был зарегистрирован или создан этот субъект (для юридических лиц, зарегистрированных субъектов и правоотношений). Или юрисдикция государства (для государств и государственных органов). See Jurisdiction |
|||
jurisdiction/name |
string |
Required |
||
Название |
Название юрисдикции |
|||
jurisdiction/code |
string |
|||
Код страны или административно-территориальной единицы |
2-буквенный код страны (ISO 3166-1) или код административно-территориальной единицы (ISO 3166-2). |
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foundingDate |
string |
date |
||
Дата основания |
Дата, в которую был основан, создан или зарегистрирован этот субъект. Дата ДОЛЖНА быть указана в формате YYYY-MM-DD. Если нет точных сведений о месяце или дате, значение можно округлить до первого дня (первого) месяца. О таком округлении СЛЕДУЕТ указать в сопроводительном руководстве (например, в политике публикаций или в руководстве по использованию данных). |
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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.