Use: Corporate due diligence¶
To what extent do products or services exist that use open company data to support due diligence?
Definitions and Identification
Due diligence involves carrying out checks before entering into a financial relationship with a company, such as signing a contract with a supplier or opening a bank account for a company. For example, due diligence may involve checking who the owners of the company are, whether the company is still active, and whether the company has filed up to date accounts. Certain organizations are under legal obligations to carry out due diligence as part of anti-money laundering (AML) requirements, but due diligence may also be carried out voluntarily to manage operational and financial risks. In financial services, due diligence checks are sometimes referred to as "know your customer" (KYC).
Often, carrying out due diligence involves bringing together multiple sources of data and putting it in context. Some countries have an active market of due diligence providers who take open company data, process it, and combine it with other sources to produce reports on the opportunities or risks of working with a particular company. They may do this by providing an online tool or offering a digital service.
This indicator examines whether there are tools or digital services that are run from within—or specifically tailored to—the country. This intentionally contrasts with global tools that may just happen to include some companies from the country.
Examples of tools and services that would meet the indicator's definition include:
- YouControl from Ukraine, which provides an online search tool and detailed profiles of companies based on open and scraped data.
- DueDil in the UK, which provides access to analysis based on data from the UK Company Register (Companies House) for use in know your business (an extension of know your customer) and KYC applications.
Examples that would not meet the definition include:
- CompanyDilligence.com, a consultancy carrying out bespoke research for any country. It does not provide a data-driven tool or service or appear to use bulk data from any specific country.
- OpenCorporates.com, which, though it aggregates company register data from many countries, does not offer country-specific analysis products or services.
You are most likely to find results for this indicator when the company register assessed in the related availability indicator is digitized and provides either open data or paid-for data feeds. If you cannot locate any data available from the company register, you should not spend long on this question.
We prioritize cases where open data is being used, although you can also record cases that appear to be sourcing data through other means.
Digital platforms and services will generally have a well-promoted web presence. Thus, to research this indicator, focus on web searches to find evidence of digital tools and platforms that process company data and produce reports or analysis for due diligence work. Look for evidence of where these products may be used.
When searching, be aware that international (that is, non-local) platforms often buy keyword advertisements against terms like 'due diligence' and 'know your customer.' Consequently, the first search results or ad-supported search results may not be relevant. Don't spend time on these unless they appear to be local services.
Starting points
- Consult:
- Individuals who may have experience in working with company data from the country, and/or carrying out due diligence checks on businesses. Do they use platforms that bring together data to produce analysis?
- Some services may have live chat support or contact details where you can ask whether they use data from the company register or beneficial ownership registers.
- Search: (focus on non-advertising results)
- 'Open company data users' + [country].
- [Country] + 'company due diligence tools'.
- [Register name] + 'due diligence' + 'platform'.
- (E.g., 'Companies House Due Diligence United Kingdom'.)
- [Register name] + 'know your customer' or 'KYC' + 'platform'.
- 'Who is using [register name] data?'
What to look for?
- Look for evidence that a platform or service is from, or tailored to, the country of research:
- Does the brand name or website domain name indicate it is focused on the country?
- Does the homepage of the website focus on the country, or provide specific links to information for the country? (Beware of landing pages with generic copy mentioning the country that have been created for search engine optimization purposes)
- Does the tool or service say it can cover hundreds of countries? If so, it is probably not a country-specific tool or service.
- Look for evidence of the kinds of data being used in the tool:
- Can you see examples of graphs, tables, and analysis that appears to be driven by company data?
- Check that any know your customer (KYC) platforms you assess are concerned with company customers rather than individual people.
- Are sources of data listed? Does it mention the company register or beneficial ownership data?
- Can you access a (free) trial of the tool and see evidence of the kinds of data being used?
- Do any of the tools or services appear to make use of beneficial ownership data?
- Look for evidence of who uses the tool or services:
- Is the marketing of the tool or service focused only on private sector, or does it mention other users such as civil society and government?
- Does pricing information for the tool mention discounts or free access for nonprofit users?
- Look for evidence of use and impact:
- Are there any cases studies that show how these tools or services have been used?
National and sub-national considerations
For this indicator, you may track and assess national and sub-national examples without distinction; note in the justification box if the examples you found mostly used national or sub-national data.
Show/hide supporting questions
Existence
- Is there evidence of this data being used in products/services?
- There is no evidence of such products or services in the country.
- One or more products/services exist, but they do not appear to make use of open datasets.
Supporting questions: Where do these products or services appear to get their data from? Please provide evidence of those products and briefly explain your answer.
- One or more products/services exist using making use of official open government datasets.
Supporting questions: Please provide evidence of those products and briefly explain your answer.
- One or more products/services exist making use of open government datasets, and there is evidence of their widespread use.
Supporting questions: Please provide evidence of those products and briefly explain your answer.
Elements
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User groups:
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There is evidence of these products and services being promoted to, or used by, government. (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'Yes' for more than one example; answer 'Partially' for a single example.
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please provide URL(s) of evidence.
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There is evidence of these products/services being promoted to, or used by, civil society (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'Yes' for more than one example; answer 'Partially' for a single example.
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please provide URL(s) of evidence.
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There is evidence of these products/services being promoted to, or used by, the private sector. (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'Yes' for more than one example; answer 'Partially' for a single example.
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially: Please provide URL(s) of evidence.
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There is evidence of these products and services being promoted to, or used by, media. (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'Yes' for more than one example; answer 'Partially' for a single example.
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please provide URL(s) of evidence.
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Specific features:
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There is evidence that at least one of the examples cited is making use of beneficial ownership data. (No, Partially, Yes)
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please provide the URL(s) of examples using beneficial ownership data.
If Partially or Yes: If possible, please briefly describe how beneficial ownership data is being used.
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At least one of the examples identified describes using artificial Intelligence or machine learning to process data (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'Partially' if you have doubts about the accuracy of claims to be using AI/machine-learning.
Supporting questions (conditional)
If Partially or Yes: Please provide brief details of the example(s) and how they describe using AI/machine-learning.
Extent
- There is evidence that these uses have had or are having meaningful positive impacts.
- No
- Partially
Supporting questions: Please briefly explain and provide URLs to relevant evidence.
- Yes
Supporting questions: Please briefly explain and provide URLs to relevant evidence.
This indicator focuses on both the creation of products and services using company information, and the use of those services by different sectors. It thus seeks to capture the economic impacts of open data, on the assumption that such products and services may generate commercial revenue and re-risk economic activity. And it also seeks to capture the social impacts realized when civil society, media, and government use this data, after having accessed it through intermediaries.
Often, due diligence platforms combine company information with other domestic sources of intelligence on firms. We assume this may give domestic entrepreneurs building intermediary platforms some comparative advantages. Consequently, this indicator investigates the emergence of data-using intermediaries at the country level, rather than internationally.
Krasikov et. al. (2020) have raised the question of whether open data on companies is ready for use in enterprise contexts. This indicator responds to this knowledge gap, exploring the extent to which countries' data quality issues act as a barrier to developing a market of firms using company data.