Ownership resolution, explained

Why a single lookup isn't resolution

A single register query tells you who holds shares in one specific company. If that shareholder is itself a company, you don't yet know who owns it. Resolution means repeating that lookup at every layer - the shareholder's shareholder, and so on - until every branch either reaches a person or hits a defined stopping point. A process that queries only the first layer and stops isn't resolution; it's a shareholder lookup that happens to look similar.

Merging percentages across paths

Ownership doesn't always arrive through a single path. A person can hold a company directly and also indirectly, through a separate holding structure - both paths need to be found and combined into one merged effective percentage for that person, not reported as if they were two unrelated, coincidental stakes.

Chains don't always resolve cleanly

Some chains reach a natural person cleanly. Others stop for a specific, nameable reason: a fiduciary or nominee arrangement, a register that doesn't publish this data, an entity with genuinely no natural owner. Treating an unresolved chain the same as a fully-resolved one - or worse, silently treating it as "no beneficial owner found" - loses exactly the information that matters most for a compliance decision. See how Keizu determines a UBO for the full, closed set of stopping reasons.

Resolution vs. verification vs. monitoring

Resolution is the mechanism. Verification is confirming the result at a point in time. Monitoring is repeating resolution on a schedule to catch when the answer changes.