Trulioo UBO Discovery Agent targets beneficial ownership gaps

Trulioo announced the Trulioo UBO Discovery Agent, an AI-based addition to its business risk and Know Your Business verification workflow, aimed at identifying ultimate beneficial owners when registry data is incomplete. The company said early deployments increased UBO coverage by 20% to 80% compared with registry-only research, with coverage in some difficult markets rising from well below 5% to more than 90%.

The product extends Trulioo’s existing UBO Discovery capability, which the company said uses official registry data and its proprietary Business Graph. Trulioo said that graph draws on more than 15 years of work matching ownership records across global markets.

For banks, fintechs, marketplaces and other regulated companies, beneficial ownership checks are a core part of customer due diligence. A UBO is the person who ultimately owns or controls a business, even when shares are held through other companies or across multiple jurisdictions.

What is Trulioo UBO Discovery Agent?

Trulioo UBO Discovery Agent is a governed AI tool designed to reconstruct company ownership across countries and fragmented records, according to Trulioo. The company said it is built to fill gaps left by registries, rather than rely only on customer declarations or manual analyst research.

Trulioo said the agent uses jurisdiction-specific logic to assess how company ownership is recorded in different markets. Zac Cohen, Trulioo’s chief product officer, said registries often show legal ownership on paper but may not reflect rapid changes in control or identify the person behind a corporate chain.

The company said the system does not use a general model pointed at the open internet. According to Trulioo, each ownership finding must be tied to cited evidence from four categories: official registries, commercial data providers, legally required disclosures and open-source intelligence.

Trulioo said the tool is designed to return no defensible answer when evidence is insufficient, rather than infer ownership without support. The company described that audit trail as intended to help compliance teams maintain records that can be reviewed by regulators.

Why beneficial ownership checks are difficult

Trulioo said ownership verification is made harder by uneven registry coverage across countries. In markets where registries exist, they may list shareholders or directors of record rather than the individual exercising control.

The company also pointed to timing gaps. Ownership changes may occur before filings are submitted and processed, meaning a registry search can reflect a previous ownership structure rather than the current one. Cross-border ownership chains can also break when they reach jurisdictions that do not make relevant data available.

Compliance teams have often addressed those gaps through analyst-led research or customer self-certifications, Trulioo said. The company argued that both approaches can slow onboarding and raise operational costs.

Enterprise deployment begins in three markets

Trulioo said one of the world’s largest social commerce platforms is the first enterprise customer to deploy the UBO Discovery Agent. The rollout is scheduled to begin in July 2026 across Malaysia, Vietnam and the United Kingdom.

According to Trulioo, the customer compared the agent against other sources across priority markets. The company said the tool led on coverage in all three markets, was the only viable option in one and was the highest-performing source in the other two.

Trulioo said the product could reduce stalled onboarding cases and lower the cost of each case for its customers. It also said the tool may support expansion in markets including the United States, Latin America and Asia Pacific, where it described registries as weaker, without requiring another vendor or additional compliance staff.

The UBO Discovery Agent is the first in a planned series of AI agents across Trulioo’s identity, fraud and business risk platform, according to the company.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.