Bringing complex ownership structures into one connected view 

The challenge: The same entity, recorded in multiple places 

A fund administrator responsible for complex investor, corporate and trust structures was struggling to maintain a clear view of ownership and control across its client base.
The problem was not a lack of information. It was that the information existed in multiple places.

Investor records were maintained in one system, corporate entities in another, while ownership charts were stored as diagrams, PDFs or spreadsheets. Directors, authorised signatories and beneficial ownership information were often recorded separately and maintained manually.

The same individual could appear multiple times across the organisation. A director may sit on the boards of several companies, a beneficial owner may have interests across multiple structures, and an authorised signatory could be linked to numerous entities.

Without a central relationship management platform, the same person was frequently recreated across different records, resulting in duplication, inconsistent information and increasing operational complexity.

Understanding who ultimately owned or controlled a structure often required experienced staff to review corporate records, organisational charts and historical documentation before reconstructing relationships manually.

And once the underlying structure changed, the work needed to be revisited.

Why it mattered: Teams were reconstructing relationships instead of assessing risk 

The business needed to move away from maintaining multiple versions of the same entity and instead create a single record that could be connected to every structure in which that entity appeared.

As the structures administered by the organisation became larger and more interconnected, maintaining an accurate view of ownership and control became increasingly difficult.

Every ownership review, audit request, periodic review, onboarding exercise or regulatory enquiry could require teams to verify ownership structures, identify beneficial owners and controllers, review connected parties, check director appointments and validate signing authorities.

Much of that work involved manually reconstructing relationship hierarchies before teams could begin the assessment itself.

Duplicate records created an additional problem. When information about an individual or entity changed, teams needed to identify everywhere that information was held and update each record separately. This increased maintenance effort and created the risk that different parts of the organisation could be working from inconsistent information.

The business needed to move away from maintaining multiple versions of the same entity and instead create a single record that could be connected to every structure in which that entity appeared.

The solution: One entity, every relationship

The organisation implemented PureClient as its central client data and entity management platform.

Instead of creating a separate record each time an individual or organisation appeared within a structure, PureClient maintains each entity once and uses relationships to define how it connects to other entities across the client base.

For example, an individual who is a director of three companies is created once. That same record can be linked as a director of each company and simultaneously connected as an authorised signatory, controller or beneficial owner within other structures.

When information relating to that individual changes, it is updated once and automatically reflected throughout every structure in which they appear.
The business no longer manages duplicate records. It manages relationships.

Ownership & control mapped through live data

Puritas used PureClient’s configurable entity and relationship model to relect the ownership and control structures administered by the organisation.

Companies, trusts, individuals and other entities are connected through relationships representing directors, beneficial owners, controllers, authorised signatories and other related parties are modelled rather than documented.

Ownership can be traced through multiple corporate layers, controllers and connected parties can be identified automatically, and users can navigate both up and down through relationship hierarchies to understand how a structure fits together.

Rather than documenting those relationships separately through static organisational charts and spreadsheets, the relationships themselves are held as data within PureClient.
Structure diagrams are generated directly from live data, so the visual representation of a structure remains current as the underlying relationships change

Compliance built around the same relationships

Bringing entities and relationships together also gave the organisation a clearer view of the information required for compliance and governance.

Compliance teams can identify ultimate beneficial owners, understand control relationships, detect politically exposed persons (PEPs), identify ownership exceptions and support customer due diligence (CDD) and periodic reviews from the same connected data.

Where establishing those relationships previously required manual investigation across different records and documents, the information is now immediately accessible through PureClient.
The same connected view also makes it easier to respond to audit and regulatory requests without reconstructing ownership and control structures each time information is required.

The Outcome: Complete visibility without duplicate records

The organisation replaced duplicate entity records, disconnected spreadsheets and static ownership charts with a dynamic relationship model built around a single source of truth.

Every entity now exists once, with relationships connecting it to every relevant investor, company, trust or other structure. Duplicate records have been eliminated, while changes to an entity are automatically reflected wherever that entity appears.

Ownership and control structures are visible in real time, with structure diagrams generated directly from the underlying data. Teams can identify beneficial owners, controllers, directors, signatories and connected parties without manually reconstructing the relationships between them.

For compliance teams, this means faster access to the information needed for due diligence, periodic reviews, PEP monitoring, audit and regulatory enquiries. For the wider business, it means less time spent maintaining and validating ownership information and greater confidence that teams are working from the same record.

The result is complete visibility across complex investor and corporate structures, with less manual investigation, stronger compliance oversight and a more scalable way to manage relationships as the business grows.

“What was once a collection of disconnected records became a fully connected view of entities, ownership and control. By maintaining each entity only once and linking it through configurable relationships, PureClient gave us complete visibility across even the most complex structures while significantly reducing operational risk and administration effort.”
Michael Feighan, Operations Director, Puritas

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