FinCEN’s final rule ended beneficial ownership information reporting for companies formed in the U.S. on August 14, 2026. The agency will also delete 15 million reports from domestic companies that it received before it added a reporting exemption for U.S. businesses in March 2025.

The rule removes the standardized federal ownership record Congress intended to create for financial institutions and investigators. Banks still have customer-due-diligence responsibilities, and investigators still need to identify the people behind a business. They will rely more heavily on customer submissions, state filings, commercial sources, and investigative tools that were never designed to function as one system.

Middesk helps institutions assemble the remaining evidence into a clearer business identity by connecting records from more than 400 government sources across all 50 states with submitted information and other business indicators. Middesk then normalizes those records, weighs the strength of matching evidence, and links them into a source-backed identity graph that teams can use to verify, investigate, monitor, and make decisions about a business.

In brief:

• FinCEN ended beneficial ownership reporting for U.S.-formed companies and kept narrower reporting requirements for certain foreign-formed companies registered to do business in the United States.
• The final rule relieves an estimated 27.5 million outstanding or expected domestic-company filings and eliminates about 53 million hours of annual reporting work and $9 billion in modeled annual compliance costs.
• Banks and investigators still need ownership information, but they will have to reconcile more customer submissions, state records, commercial sources, and investigative data without one federal ownership record for U.S.-formed companies.

The Corporate Transparency Act created a federal reporting system for beneficial ownership information, which identifies the individuals who own or control a company. The system was intended to give authorized law enforcement agencies and financial institutions with customer consent access to a standardized ownership record.

Before the agency introduced a broad domestic-company exemption in March 2025, it received approximately 15 million reports from domestic reporting companies. The final rule makes that exemption permanent and U.S.-formed companies no longer have to file beneficial ownership reports with FinCEN. Foreign-formed companies registered to do business in the United States remain reporting companies, but they do not have to report the beneficial ownership information of U.S. persons or company applicants. U.S. persons likewise do not have to provide that information to those companies.

FinCEN estimates that the narrower regime relieves approximately 27.5 million outstanding or expected domestic-company filings. The agency expects approximately 16,800 foreign reporting companies in the first year and about 1,800 new reporting companies in each subsequent year.

Financial institutions still have to comply with customer due diligence responsibilities. They can still collect ownership information directly from customers. They can ask a business to provide ownership details, verify those details through other sources, and use the results when assessing the customer’s risk.

Banks will have to do more of that work without a federal record for U.S.-formed companies. State filings vary in what they collect, how often businesses update the information, and who can access it. A filing may list officers, directors, managers, or members without identifying the people who own or control the business.

The Bank Policy Institute last year supported reducing unnecessary reporting burdens but warned that the narrower approach could shift more work to businesses and banks. Financial institutions may need to request ownership information more often and reconcile it across less consistent sources.

The loss of federal beneficial ownership information adds complexity by distributing that information across state systems that are not standardized and have different definitions, update cycles, and levels of detail. Middesk makes fragmented evidence more usable and gives teams a clearer record of what the available sources show, where they agree or conflict, and what still requires review.

Middesk connects state registrations and other government records with submitted business information, and analyzes the connections between businesses and people. Its entity resolution engine normalizes those records, weighs the strength of matching evidence, and links related records into a source-backed business identity.

That identity powers structured verification results, review insights, risk scores, investigation findings, policies, and ongoing monitoring. Banks, fintechs, lenders, and other institutions can compare what a customer submitted with available records, surface inconsistencies, and route exceptions for further investigation.

In May, the Government Accountability Office examined the ownership-information gap after FinCEN’s exemption on domestic companies and found that the expanded exemption covered more than 99% of the entities previously expected to report. 

The Government Accountability Office also found that state records vary in the ownership and control information they collect. Some may identify an officer, director, manager, or member without identifying the people who own or control the business. Investigators can use subpoenas, suspicious activity reports, customer records, and commercial databases, but those sources do not create one complete, standardized record of company ownership.

Deleting domestic-company beneficial ownership information removes a stable federal reference point. Investigators will have to compare more records across jurisdictions, organizations, and time to determine whether the information identifies the same business and people.

The Government Accountability Office recommended that Treasury identify ways to address the risks created by the expanded exemptions and provide Congress and law enforcement with useful information about those risks. Treasury disagreed with the recommendation.