On 8 July 2026 the World Bank formally launched the Global Hub for Beneficial Ownership Transparency (gloBOT), a new international coordination platform intended to strengthen collaboration around beneficial ownership transparency (BOT). The initiative has been established in response to a widely recognised challenge: while international standards, country reforms and technical assistance have expanded rapidly over the past decade, support to governments has often remained fragmented, overlapping and insufficiently coordinated. The launch therefore marked an important shift from promoting beneficial ownership transparency as an objective in itself towards improving the effectiveness, coherence and practical impact of implementation.
The event brought together representatives from the principal international organisations leading work on beneficial ownership transparency, anti-money laundering and governance reform. As one World Bank speaker observed, “we have a full house of the important people here today”, reflecting the breadth of institutional representation supporting the initiative. Senior participation included the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Financial Action Task Force (FATF), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Open Ownership, FCDO (UK Government) and donor representatives, with the World Bank acting as Secretariat for the Hub.
The Hub has a Technical Advisory Panel representing the Hub members, represented at this event by Carolina Prelazzi (FATF), Thom Townsend (Open Ownership), Melissa Tullis (UNODC), Emile van der Does de Willebois (World Bank) and Ivana Rossi (IMF).
The rationale for gloBOT was consistently framed around the need to provide countries with better coordinated support. Speakers recognised that governments increasingly expect practical assistance in implementing beneficial ownership reforms, yet technical assistance providers themselves face resource constraints and risk duplicating one another’s efforts. The Hub is therefore intended to provide a mechanism through which international organisations can share information, coordinate activities and present more consistent advice to governments. Rather than creating new standards, the objective is to improve how existing standards are implemented and translated into effective country reforms.
A recurring theme throughout the discussion was that beneficial ownership transparency has matured considerably over recent years. International standards have become more comprehensive, a broad understanding now exists of the forms of abuse that beneficial ownership information is intended to address, and many jurisdictions have introduced registers or legal disclosure requirements. The discussion suggested that the challenge has therefore evolved from establishing the case for beneficial ownership transparency towards ensuring that systems are genuinely useful, proportionate and capable of delivering measurable public value.
Several panellists stressed that the effectiveness of beneficial ownership transparency should be judged by its practical use rather than the existence of a register alone. Thom Townsend emphasised that beneficial ownership information must be useful if it is to be effective, while several speakers highlighted the importance of adopting a risk-based approach that reflects national circumstances rather than applying identical solutions across all jurisdictions. Effective implementation was repeatedly linked to wider governance measures, including strong rule of law, supervision of professional facilitators, robust verification mechanisms and effective enforcement.
The IMF highlighted the title of the technical session, “All Hands on Deck”, as an appropriate description of the next phase of global implementation. Speakers argued that beneficial ownership transparency now extends well beyond anti-money laundering alone, supporting procurement integrity, taxation, anti-corruption, sanctions implementation and wider public sector governance. This wider relevance reinforces the need for stronger collaboration between international organisations and technical assistance providers.
The launch also provided greater detail on the planned activities of gloBOT itself. Initial work will focus on developing shared knowledge products, improving visibility of technical assistance through mapping country engagements, strengthening the evidence base for what works in beneficial ownership reform, and creating regular opportunities for coordination between international organisations, researchers, civil society and practitioners. A Technical Advisory Group has been established comprising the principal international organisations active in this field, while additional working groups are planned covering civil society, the private sector, procurement and environmental issues. These structures are intended to help ensure that future technical assistance is better connected across institutions and more closely aligned with wider governance and development programmes.
Questions from participants focused particularly on access to beneficial ownership information and the role of the private sector. FATF representatives reiterated support for competent authority access as a minimum standard while encouraging broader access for financial institutions and designated non-financial businesses and professions, supported by discrepancy reporting. Other panellists argued that businesses expected to undertake customer due diligence should also be considered important users of beneficial ownership information. Melissa Tullis emphasised that both the regulated private sector and civil society should be involved in discussions regarding future reforms, while Ivana Rossi underlined that registers only deliver value if they are accessible to those government authorities responsible for combating corruption and financial crime.
The launch demonstrated a clear commitment by the World Bank, IMF, FATF, UNODC, Open Ownership and partner organisations to work collectively in supporting the next phase of global beneficial ownership reforms. The central message was not that new international standards are required, but that existing expertise, technical assistance and country engagement should increasingly be delivered through coordinated, complementary and evidence-based approaches capable of generating greater impact for implementing countries.
Michael Barron and Tim Law are independent consultants who advise governments, international institutions, civil society organisations and businesses on implementing effective beneficial ownership reporting systems. They have delivered beneficial ownership transparency projects in more than 20 countries.
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