The British Virgin Islands (BVI) beneficial ownership regime
comes into force on 30 June 2017. It creates a secure, non-public
search platform called BOSS (Beneficial Ownership Secure Search
System) and gives effect to commitments made to the United Kingdom
(UK) to facilitate the sharing of beneficial ownership
information.
Other leading international financial centres gave similar
commitments to the UK Government and are implementing similar
secure platforms or registers.
1. What does the legislation mean?
The Beneficial Ownership Secure Search System Act, 2017 (the
Act) comes into force on 30 June 2017. The Act requires that
registered agents maintain a database of the corporate and legal
entities for whom they act as registered agent (the RA
Database). The RA Database will be private. It will,
however, be searchable by certain BVI Governmental bodies via BOSS,
which enables an electronic secure search of each RA Database.
