KYC & KYB Screening Services

• Corporate Registry Verification: Confirmation of legal entity status, registration number, incorporation date, and jurisdiction of formation.
• Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO) Identification: Tracing ownership layers to identify all individuals holding 10%-25%+ ownership or control, in line with FATF recommendations and local thresholds.
• Director and Officer Screening: Background checks on key personnel for sanctions, PEP status, criminal history, and adverse media.
• Business Activity Assessment: Evaluation of stated business activities against actual transaction behavior to detect inconsistencies.
• Sanctions and Watchlist Screening: Entity-level screening against OFAC, EU, UN, HMT, and other global sanctions regimes.
• Financial Health Indicators: Review of credit standing, litigation history, and insolvency records where applicable.

LegalBison’s KYB screening is designed for scale. Whether you are verifying ten strategic partners per quarter or onboarding thousands of merchants monthly, our fractional compliance teams integrate seamlessly into your workflows.

LegalBison supports organisations across every sector that faces identity verification or business due diligence obligations, including but not limited to:

• Banks, credit unions, and lending institutions
• Fintech companies and digital payment platforms
• Cryptocurrency exchanges and virtual asset service providers (VASPs)
• Money service businesses (MSBs) and remittance providers
• Insurance companies and brokers
• Investment firms, wealth managers, and fund administrators
• Real estate developers and property management firms
• Legal and accounting practices handling client funds
• E-commerce marketplaces and gambling operators
• NGOs and non-profits managing cross-border donations

If your business touches regulated financial activity in any jurisdiction, you need KYC and KYB screening. LegalBison makes it accessible.

CDD sorts customers into risk tiers before any transaction moves forward. LegalBison’s screening teams weigh four factors together: the customer’s geography, their occupation, the pattern of transactions they run, and how complex their ownership or relationship structure is. A retail customer in a low-risk jurisdiction with a simple transaction history lands in a standard tier. A corporate customer with layered ownership across multiple countries does not.

The tiering decision shapes everything downstream. Standard-risk customers move through a lighter review cycle. Anything flagged as elevated risk gets pulled into deeper checks before onboarding completes. This is where CDD earns its name: due diligence proportional to actual risk, not a flat checklist applied the same way to every applicant.

Occupation matters here too. A customer working in cash-intensive industries or in sectors with known exposure to fraud gets scrutinized differently than a salaried employee at a regulated institution. Transaction pattern analysis then confirms whether behavior matches what the customer’s profile would predict, or whether something warrants a closer look.

EDD applies when CDD flags a customer as high risk. This is not a deeper version of the same checklist. It is a separate track built for cases where the standard process cannot provide sufficient assurance: politically exposed persons (PEPs), customers connected to sanctioned or high-risk jurisdictions, and individuals whose transaction behavior or ownership structure raises specific red flags.

The investigation goes further than identity verification. Analysts trace the source of funds and source of wealth, map beneficial ownership through multiple layers where needed, and review adverse media for any history of financial crime, corruption, or regulatory action. For PEPs, this includes checking family members and known close associates, since risk often sits one step removed from the named individual.

Approval for an EDD case typically requires senior management sign-off rather than routine analyst clearance. The relationship also gets flagged for more frequent review cycles once onboarded, since elevated-risk customers are the ones most likely to shift behavior in ways that matter. EDD exists precisely for the accounts where getting it wrong carries the highest cost.