Directors, PSCs and beneficial owners explained for marketplace teams: what each term means, where to find them and what to check before approving.
Business verification comes with a pile of overlapping terms. Directors, officers, PSCs, UBOs, beneficial owners. They get used interchangeably in meetings and onboarding specs, and that causes real problems. A team that thinks it is checking "the owners" may be checking only the directors, who are often different people.
This post explains each term in plain English, where the information comes from, and what a marketplace should do with it.
This is general information, not legal advice. If you have specific obligations under anti-money laundering rules, take advice and see GOV.UK guidance.
Directors are the people legally responsible for running a company. They sign off accounts, make decisions and are accountable for what the company does. Along with company secretaries, they appear in the officers list on Companies House.
A director does not have to own any of the company. A small company might have one person who is both owner and director. A larger company might have professional directors who own nothing.
For a marketplace, directors matter because they are the people most likely to sign up on the company's behalf, and the people whose names should be screened.
A person with significant control (PSC) is someone who owns or controls the company. According to GOV.UK guidance on PSCs, a PSC is usually anyone who:
The same guidance notes PSCs are sometimes called "beneficial owners", and companies must identify them, record them and report them to Companies House. That means the PSC register is a public, official starting point for ownership.
"Ultimate beneficial owner" (UBO) is a term used widely in anti-money laundering work. It means the real people who ultimately own or control a business, even through layers of other companies.
The difference from PSC matters when ownership is layered. If Company A is owned by Company B, Company A's PSC register might show Company B as a "relevant legal entity" rather than a person. To find the people behind it, you have to follow the chain into Company B's records, and so on.
For most marketplace sellers, small UK limited companies, the PSC and the UBO will be the same people. When they are not, that is usually the case worth a closer look.
The PSC register is filed by the company. Historically, nobody checked the identity of the people named. That is changing: since 18 November 2025, Companies House has required new directors and PSCs to verify their identity, with a 12-month transition for existing ones (Companies House).
Even with that improvement, three gaps stay for a marketplace:
A proportionate approach for most marketplaces:
For every company seller
When something stands out
For higher-risk categories or high volumes
TrustVerify's KYB check (POST /api/v1/kyb/verify) reads the live Companies House record. The response includes the officers list (name, role, appointment date) and a pscCount. Active officers of a registry-verified company are screened through OpenSanctions as part of the same check. See the UK KYB guide and the API reference.
PSC detail is a separate, deeper step. Where enabled, each PSC comes back with an ownership band (25-50%, 50-75% or more than 75%) and its own screening result: Clear, Review, Match or Not screened. A PSC that could not be screened is never counted as clear. The glossary has short definitions of these terms if your team needs a shared reference.
Screening directors and calling it ownership. Directors run the company. PSCs own or control it. Check both.
Stopping at a corporate PSC. A company listed as a PSC is a pointer, not an answer.
Treating a missing PSC as fine. It might be fine. It might also mean the filing is wrong or out of date.
Asking for documents you can already see. Pull what is on the register first, then ask the seller only for what is missing. It speeds up onboarding for good sellers.
Ownership checks are one part of verifying a company seller. Our post on how to verify a UK company seller covers the full flow, and sanctions screening for business sellers covers screening. [Links to be updated to batch 2 post URLs when published.] For the identity check on the applicant, see passport MRZ and selfie checks explained.
If you only remember a few points from this post, make them these:
None of these points requires a large team or a long project. Most can be put in place in a few weeks, and each one makes the next decision easier to explain.
See how officer and ownership data come back in one KYB check. Explore TrustVerify KYB.
KYC, KYB, AML screening and fraud prevention in one place, with published pricing.
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