Under the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act (Wwft) and the Financial Supervision Act (Wft), BNG is legally obliged to identify and register the ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) of our business customers and to keep this information up to date.
A UBO is a natural person who is the ultimate beneficial owner of or has control over an organisation through the holding of shares, voting rights, ownership interests or other means. In this case, this concerns ownership or control of more than 25%. If no UBO can be determined based on the definition, the entity's senior management qualifies as pseudo-UBOs. These are usually all statutory directors as registered with the Chamber of Commerce.
Under European legislation (the fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (EU Directive) 2015/849), all EU countries are required to maintain their own UBO register. In the Netherlands, the UBO register is regulated by law in the Wwft Implementation Decree 2018, the Trade Register Act 2007 and the Trade Register Decree 2008. The UBO register is part of the Trade Register and, as of 27 March 2022, all organisations with a certain legal form must be registered in the register.
At present, the UBO register is still closed to banks. A temporary arrangement is therefore in place, allowing BNG to request a certified UBO extract when entering into a relationship. For more information, please visit the Government website (Dutch).
In addition to registering the UBOs in the UBO register of the Chamber of Commerce, we ask you to also provide this information directly to us via the UBO form. BNG is not permitted to automatically retrieve this information from the UBO register. The information in the UBO register is insufficient for the mandatory customer due diligence under the Wwft. We are legally obliged to independently determine who the UBOs are and to verify this with additional documentation.
To protect the financial system against financial crime, we monitor transactions on accounts daily. We map out customers' cash flows so that we can identify any unusual or irregular transactions. We may contact you by telephone or email to request additional information or documentation. We may also ask you to explain certain transactions. This enables us to ensure that your client file is accurate and up to date.