OpenCorporates - The largest open database of companies in the world

The US has stopped collecting who owns its companies, and no one can fill that gap

On 11 August, FinCEN issued a final rule permanently removing the requirement for US companies and US persons to report who owns them. It also confirmed that it will delete records already in the database wherever it believes they belong to a US person. The Washington Post covered it the same day. So the gap is permanent, and the brief federal record of who owns American companies is being erased.

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August 20, 2026

How the Treasury’s Do Not Pay program uses OpenCorporates data to check a business is real before it pays it

On August 18, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury published a one-page notice in the Federal Register titled: Designation of Databases to the Do Not Pay Working System. It marks the moment OpenCorporates data has officially been integrated into the system the federal government uses to decide whether a business should be paid, closing a process opened two months earlier, on the 25th of June 2026, when the Treasury published its proposed designation publicly.

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August 19, 2026

Entity Verification / Case studies / Fraud Investigations

How NICB uses OpenCorporates to detect insurance fraud and verify business legitimacy

The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating insurance fraud and crime. Using OpenCorporates' legal entity data covering all North American jurisdictions, NICB has enhanced their fraud detection capabilities, allowing them to verify business legitimacy, track entity relationships, and identify fraudulent patterns. This partnership has also enabled NICB to build a data-driven case for policy advocacy around registry transparency, demonstrating the societal value that open legal entity data provides.

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August 6, 2026

Data / Entity Verification

The registered agent called “Located In”

Every company register insists on a registered agent: a name and a street address where lawsuits and state letters can reach someone who will actually notice. The OpenCorporates API exposes this twice. Once on the company record, as agent_name. Once in the officers list, as whoever holds the agent role. I wanted to see what edge cases of those names, so I searched the officers endpoint for a phrase instead of a person. I typed LOCATED IN. The API came back with two thousand and eleven matches.

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July 22, 2026

Data / Entity Verification

The church incorporated in the year one

The other week I was testing a company data API, running harmless searches against Connecticut to see how the search behaved. I asked for companies whose names contain the word "New". Back came the usual spread of LLCs and property vehicles, and then a result that literally stopped me mid-scroll: ST. PETER'S CHURCH OF NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT. Company number 0065179. Status: Active. Company type: Special Chartered. Incorporation date: 3 January 0001 (over 2025 years ago).

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July 8, 2026

Case studies / Data Access / Fraud Investigations

How the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) is still finding ownership when 99% of companies have gone dark

A new report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns that a 2025 rule change stripped beneficial ownership reporting from more than 99 percent of US companies. That gap makes it harder to see who is behind a business, and it is the second time in just over a year that the GAO has raised the same concern. Its forensic investigators use primary-source legal entity data from OpenCorporates to keep tracing those connections anyway.

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June 10, 2026

Case studies / Entity Resolution / Entity Verification

Case study: Why automating fund verification is the new standard for Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) providers

This case study examines how leading CLM providers are addressing unprecedented challenges through automated fund verification, drawing on real-world implementations that demonstrate measurable improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and client satisfaction. The evidence shows that automation has evolved from a competitive advantage to a fundamental requirement for CLM providers serving the financial services sector.

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May 28, 2026

Case studies / Data Management / Financial Services

Case study: The modern MDM strategy of a leading global investment firm

Master Data Management (MDM) is undergoing a profound transformation, transitioning from a back-office support function into a critical strategic enabler of compliance, risk management, and business intelligence. A leading global investment firm, specializing in complex asset management, third-party administration, and portfolio operations, recognized this operational shift. Operating from North America with a massive international footprint, the enterprise manages relationships across a vast ecosystem of third-party funds, internal legal entities, global suppliers, and corporate prospects. By moving away from outdated "trust-based" proprietary identifiers and embracing a cloud-native architecture powered by "verification-based" official registry data, the firm successfully revolutionized its data governance and established a definitive "golden record" across the enterprise.

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May 5, 2026

Fundamentals of Legal Entity Identity Data

Not all legal entities are created equal

Part 10 in a series on the fundamentals of legal entity identity data. In the first post of this series, we introduced the traditional three-part taxonomy of legal personality: the natural person, the group acting in a defined capacity, and the legal construct. We flagged at the time that this was "a simplification that no longer represents legal reality" and promised to return to it. That debt comes due here. The taxonomy is not merely a simplification. It is a misleading frame – a tidy Victorian diagram that the law itself has been cheerfully dismantling for over a century – and this post retires it.

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May 1, 2026

Fundamentals of Legal Entity Identity Data

The unwilling entity problem

Part 9 in a series on the fundamentals of legal entity identity data. Before we can ask what good legal-entity identification has to do in the face of bad-actor use, we have to ask why legal entities are so useful to them in the first place. And that means asking: why are legal entities so attractive to those who want to move money, evade sanctions, launder proceeds, or sit out of reach of the law? Answer that, and what good identification has to do almost falls out.

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April 23, 2026