ACCESS OF UBO REGISTER FOR THE NOTARIAL PROFESSION IS AROUND THE CORNER

Last June, an agreement was reached and signed between the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (“CoC”) and the Dutch Royal Notarial Professional Organization (“RNPO”), to again allow civil law notaries in the Netherlands direct access to the UBO register.

Following a ruling by the European Court of Justice in November 2022, as a result of which the then Minister of Finance asked the CoC to temporarily cease providing any information from the UBO register, the register has not been public anymore since.

As from November 2022, the register can only be accessed by company directors or by persons who are themselves registered as UBOs. However, this option is only available to persons having a Dutch DigiD (which is a digital ID to access and interact with Dutch governmental institutions).

As the current restrictions cause all kinds of problems in practice, such as delays in the process, extra work for notary firms to identify the UBOs, and inefficiency in rendering services, the CoC made the information from the UBO register available to notary firms some time ago, but the notary firms can only request information if they are connected to the CoC Data Service. This connection is technically complex, must be set up by each notary firm itself and requires specific software, which means that most notary firms do not have this connection and still need to request the UBO information from the client.

The agreement concluded in June between the CoC and the RNPO should ensure that there will be a single central connection to the CoC Data Service for all notarial practices. The expectation (and hope) is that the central connection will be ready for use after the summer.

Once this has been achieved, notary firms will be able to request UBO information themselves using their own (notarial) software.