Beneficial Owner or Person Check: What the Difference Is

In short: the beneficial owner emerges automatically when you check a company, but it covers only those who hold an office or a stake above 25%. Person Check starts instead directly from the name of the individual, for three declared purposes — guarantor, professional, shareholder in a specific transaction — and also covers those who would never emerge as beneficial owners, such as a minority shareholder.

Beneficial owner: what it is and where it emerges from

When you check a company, the report automatically reconstructs who really controls it: the natural person who holds, directly or indirectly, more than 25% of the share capital, or who in any case exercises a dominant influence (art. 20 D.Lgs. 231/2007 [Legislative Decree 231/2007]). It is included in all tiers of the company report, starting from €19. See the full guide to the beneficial owner.

Person Check: what it is and where it starts

Person Check does not start from a company — it starts from the name and tax code of a specific individual you have already identified, for one of three declarable purposes: a guarantor or surety, a professional relationship, or due diligence on a shareholder or director within an ongoing transaction. See the guide to the pillar.

The three practical differences

• Starting point: the beneficial owner emerges from a search on the company; Person Check starts from a name and tax code you already have.
• Legal basis: the beneficial owner follows the Code of Conduct for business information (legitimate interest on a sector basis); Person Check follows the general legitimate interest under the GDPR (art. 6, par. 1, lett. f), limited to the three declared purposes — see the privacy notice §4.
• Who it covers: the beneficial owner concerns only those who hold a relevant office or stake (the 25% threshold for the ownership criterion); Person Check can also concern a minority shareholder below that threshold, a director not yet appointed, or a professional with no corporate role at all.

Which one to use for your case

If you are assessing a company as a whole — a supplier, a customer, a partner — the company report with the beneficial owner included is the right starting point: the relevant person emerges by itself. If instead you already have the name of a specific person — a guarantor who has been proposed to you, a professional to whom you want to entrust an assignment, a shareholder about to join with a minority stake — Person Check lets you check them directly, without waiting for them to appear (or never appear) in a chamber of commerce company extract (visura camerale).