The Isle of Man Central Registry opened a consultation in November on a proposed Companies Miscellaneous Amendment Bill, which is intended to update the island’s Corporate Laws in line with current international anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) standards.
The Isle of Man Central Registry is operationally responsible for registering and maintaining public registers for legal entities established in the island, as well as foreign companies with a substantive link to the Isle of Man and limited partnerships.
The Isle of Man government has been working to update the National Risk Assessment as part of its preparations for the October 2026 evaluation by the MONEYVAL committee, the EU anti-money laundering watchdog, particularly in respect of the transparency and beneficial ownership of legal persons – Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendation 24.
The Registry said it had determined that new primary legislation will be needed to make its company registration regime compliant with the FATF standard, which provides that competent authorities must be able to obtain, or have access to, basic information on the entity to determine its beneficial owners.
The Registry is proposing to standardise the information it holds centrally to include current and all previous names and trading names of the entity; current status; unique entity number and date of formation; evidence of formation; registered office address; constitutional documents; persons managing the entity and its legal and beneficial owners; principal business activities and their geographic location.
Where an entity’s manager or legal owner is a natural person, the Registry will request information on the person’s title; full legal name and any previous names; usual residential address; service address, if the person elects for their residential address not to be on the public register; usual country or state of residence; nationality, including previous or joint nationalities; business occupation; and date of birth. For the date of birth, only the month and year of birth will appear on the public register.
If an owner or manager is an Isle of Man-licenced corporate service provider (CSP), the company will need to provide the CSP’s corporate name and registered office address. For other types of body corporate, the Registry will also require jurisdiction and date of incorporation, as well as corporate number.
The Registry further proposes that nominee shareholders and directors will have to disclose that they are acting as a nominee and identify the nominator. Information concerning the nominee status will be displayed on the public register, regardless of whether the arrangement is formal or informal.
The Bill will also put the Registrar’s powers to cooperate with and disclose information to foreign bodies that have a responsibility to enforce AML measures and international sanctions on a statutory footing.
