Global Company Registry Index 2026: Ownership, Shareholders & UBO Access Across 200+ Jurisdictions

One of the most common questions we hear from compliance teams, KYB engineers, and risk analysts is deceptively simple: "What can I actually get on a company in [country]?" This index exists to answer that — precisely, and without the marketing spin.

The EU Ownership Landscape in 2026

The EU is not a single data market. It's 27 separate legal systems that each decided how much to share — and with whom. The result is a patchwork that compliance teams navigate manually, country by country.

Three things changed that patchwork significantly between 2024 and 2026:

1. The CJEU ruling fallout continued. The 2022 Court of Justice ruling invalidated unrestricted public access to ownership registers. By 2025, most EU states had restricted or suspended their shareholder and ownership data access. Italy and Czechia moved to fully restricted access.

2. The 6AMLD introduced "legitimate interest access" (LIA). The 6th Anti-Money Laundering Directive requires member states to grant access to ownership and corporate data for journalists, academics, AML obliged entities, and civil society. The July 2025 transposition deadline was missed by 11 member states. The European Commission opened infringement proceedings.

3. Shareholder data from company filings became the primary ownership tool. With ownership registers locked down, tracing ownership through shareholder data in company filings became the working fallback. This changes how KYB workflows are built.

How to Read This Index

Each country entry covers five dimensions: registry data, financials, directors, shareholders, plus suggested additions where relevant. Access levels follow this legend:

EU Member States — Full Index (A–Z)

EU Candidate & Accession States

Gap 2 — "LIA" often means nothing for foreign teams

Several countries have LIA on paper that is non-functional in practice for foreign compliance teams. Ireland: zero LIA approvals since 2022. Germany: 7+ month response times documented. Lithuania: both LIA routes restricted to Lithuania-based entities. Spain: Spanish eID required, Spanish-language only, 6+ months in practice. France: technically grants general database access once approved — but requires a SIREN number (French entities only) during the application, blocking non-French foreign applicants without a local subsidiary. Sweden may exclude non-EEA entities entirely once its LIA legislation is finalised. Portugal's new LIA framework (Oct 2025 Decree-Law) hasn't updated its portal yet.

Gap 1 — Financial data quality varies by company size

France allows micro-companies to opt for financial confidentiality. Spain's fee-per-document model creates friction at volume. Germany charges a minimum of €5 per certified copy. Denmark, Poland, Estonia, Ireland, and the UK offer reliable free financial statement access — though Denmark's ownership register moved to LIA in September 2025, its company register and financials remain fully public.

North America

Corporate registration in North America is decentralised by design. In the United States, companies register at the state level — not federally. In Canada, companies may incorporate federally or provincially. Both countries have made significant moves toward beneficial ownership transparency since 2022, though practical access varies considerably.

Latin America & The Caribbean

Corporate registration across Latin America is almost entirely state-level or centralised at one national authority — unlike the US. The dominant legal form is the Sociedad Anónima (S.A.) or its limited liability variant (S. de R.L. / Ltda / SAS). Transparency varies sharply: Brazil and Chile have solid open-data infrastructure; Panama and Uruguay actively protect shareholder privacy; Cuba operates a state-controlled system with no public digital access. The entire region is under increasing FATF pressure to implement UBO registers, most of which are not yet public.

South America

Central America & Mexico

Caribbean

Middle East

The Middle East presents a highly fragmented corporate transparency landscape. GCC states are modernising fast under FATF pressure — Bahrain leads with its fully public SIJILAT portal; UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman have built structured digital registries but keep UBO data non-public. The financial free zones (DIFC, ADGM, QFC) operate to near-UK standards of disclosure. Shareholder privacy remains the default across the region, with Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon facing acute institutional crises that make practical registry access extremely difficult. No Middle East state currently maintains a fully public beneficial ownership register accessible to the general public.

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)

Levant & North Africa Adjacent

Asia-Pacific

Asia-Pacific spans the full transparency spectrum. Australia and New Zealand match the most advanced EU standards in terms of free public access to directors and shareholders — though both lack a public UBO register. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan maintain well-structured digital registries with paid extracts for deeper data. China's GSXT system is publicly searchable but requires Mandarin literacy. ASEAN registries range from Malaysia's paid-access SSM (good data quality) to Indonesia's AHU (Indonesian only, fee required) to Vietnam and the Philippines (partial online access). India's MCA21 has improved significantly but access depth varies. The region broadly mandates UBO collection — none expose it publicly. Beneficial ownership registers, where they exist at all, are law-enforcement-only.

Oceania

East Asia

South Asia

Southeast Asia

Africa

Africa spans 54 sovereign states — the widest transparency gap of any continent. A small cluster of reform leaders (Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana) have built functional digital registries with reasonable public access. Francophone West and Central Africa shares the OHADA legal framework and the pan-regional RCCM registry (rccm.ohada.org) — searchable but requiring registration; depth and currency vary by country. North Africa registries are largely functional but access is in Arabic and in-person. The majority of sub-Saharan registries remain manual, fragmented, or only accessible physically or via paid agent intermediaries. No African country has a fully public UBO register. FATF Grey List status affects several jurisdictions — a direct compliance signal for KYB buyers.

North Africa

West Africa

East Africa

Southern Africa

Methodology

This index was compiled using direct registry testing, Kyckr's EU registry guides (updated through February 2026), official government sources, and the European e-Justice Portal. Data was verified as of March 2026. Given the pace of legislative change, we update this index quarterly.

For structured, normalised, API-ready ownership data across all 27 EU member states and 170+ additional jurisdictions, request a Zephira demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything compliance teams, KYB platforms, and data buyers ask us about accessing company ownership data globally.