Across jurisdictions, a clear shift is underway. Registers are moving beyond their historical role as neutral repositories of filings and becoming foundational components of national and international trust infrastructure. This transformation is being driven by regulatory reform, rising expectations around data quality and transparency, and the growing reality that corporate register data is now relied upon in enforcement, supervision, policy, and cross-border cooperation.
At the same time, registers are being asked to achieve seemingly competing objectives: improve data accuracy while reducing friction for compliant businesses, protect personal information while strengthening transparency, and open data for reuse while maintaining security and resilience. These tensions are not theoretical. They are playing out daily across registry operations worldwide.
What we consistently observe through registry modernisation programmes, capability assessments, and advisory engagements is a common direction of travel. Registers that are progressing fastest are doing so by moving up the Registry Capability Maturity Model, strengthening their role as Single Sources of Truth, and designing systems that assume interoperability, verification, and reuse from the outset rather than treating them as future enhancements.
Against that backdrop, here are 10 corporate register trends to watch in 2026.
1. Artificial intelligence becomes a practical registry capability, not an experiment
By 2026, artificial intelligence will be less about ambition and more about application. Registers are beginning to use AI to improve customer experience, reduce error rates, and support staff in managing growing volumes and complexity.
Rather than replacing human judgement, AI is increasingly being applied to assist it. Common use cases include detecting inconsistent or anomalous filings, identifying likely errors at the point of submission, guiding users through complex forms, and helping registry staff prioritise higher-risk cases.
It is a shift toward registers that learn from error patterns and improve the customer experience while strengthening integrity outcomes. This is the kind of capability progression described in work such as the OECD’s discussion of AI in public service design and delivery.
2. Verification at source becomes the default expectation
Self-declaration alone is no longer sufficient in an environment where corporate data underpins enforcement and accountability. Registers are steadily moving toward verification at source, supported by digital identity frameworks, authoritative data sources, and proportionate, risk-based controls.
The principle that is gaining traction is simple but powerful: prove once, reuse everywhere, increasingly enabled by portable credentials and interoperable trust frameworks such as the W3C’s Verifiable Credentials model. For businesses, this reduces repetitive administrative burden. For registers, it materially improves data quality and confidence in the information they hold.
3. Beneficial ownership evolves from compliance artefact to intelligence asset
Beneficial ownership data is maturing beyond its original compliance purpose. By 2026, leading registers will treat beneficial ownership as a living dataset that supports analysis rather than a static declaration captured at a single point in time.
This includes representing control as well as ownership, maintaining historical timelines, and supporting the understanding of layered and cross-border structures. In doing so, registers reinforce their role as authoritative sources of truth that can be relied upon by multiple agencies and stakeholders for different purposes.
This trajectory aligns with the direction of global standards bodies emphasising adequate, accurate, and up-to-date beneficial ownership information, reflected in guidance such as FATF’s work on beneficial ownership of legal persons.
4. Corporate structure visualisation becomes a core register capability
As data becomes more accurate and complete, attention shifts to how it is presented and understood. Flat tables and PDF extracts struggle to convey the reality of modern corporate structures.
There is growing momentum toward interactive visualisation of ownership and control, supported by clear evidence trails that link directly back to underlying filings. Tools such as EWG’s Structuriser offer a useful reference for this future state, showing how complex structures can be made immediately understandable while preserving transparency and auditability. For registries and relying parties alike, this significantly reduces misunderstanding and error.
5. Open data, APIs, and high-value dataset expectations rise
Corporate registers are increasingly recognised as foundational data platforms within the digital state. Public-sector benchmarking and digital government strategies are explicitly identifying company and ownership data as high-value datasets that remain underdeveloped in many jurisdictions.
By 2026, registers will be expected to provide well-governed APIs, secure bulk access for authorised users, and data products designed for reuse across ecosystems. Open API ecosystems will make it easier for government agencies to collaborate programmatically rather than by manual request, reducing latency between insight and action and improving whole-of-government outcomes.
Registers that succeed in this space position themselves as enablers of innovation and policy, rather than bottlenecks, increasingly reinforcing their role as a trusted Single Source of Truth that others can rely on for authoritative corporate information.
6. Interoperability becomes strategic rather than optional
Cross-border crime, commerce, and regulation demand systems that can work together within government departments and across borders. By 2026, the ability to exchange data securely and meaningfully across jurisdictions will be a defining characteristic of mature registers.
This does not imply unrestricted openness, but rather trusted, governed interoperability built on common standards and shared understanding. Platforms such as MetaReg point to where this is heading, enabling register-to-register connectivity at global scale while preserving national sovereignty and control.
7. Auditability and evidentiary integrity become non-negotiable
As registry data is increasingly relied upon in investigations and court proceedings, systems must be able to demonstrate integrity over time. This includes full versioning of records, immutable audit trails, and clear attribution of who submitted or amended information and when.
These capabilities are no longer nice to have. They are fundamental to credibility, particularly as registers take on a more active role in supporting enforcement and accountability. That pushes auditability into the core of registry design: clear audit trails, and traceable data that stands up under scrutiny.
In public-sector terms, this mirrors the governance disciplines captured in the OECD’s work on internal control and audit, where assurance, accountability, and risk management are treated as institutional fundamentals rather than technical afterthoughts.
8. Cyber resilience and third-party risk move firmly into the boardroom
Corporate registers are critical national infrastructure. High-profile cyber incidents across public systems have elevated security and resilience from operational concerns to governance priorities.
By 2026, cyber resilience is less likely to be framed as a technical posture and more as a governance discipline: security-by-design, resilience testing, incident readiness, and supplier risk controls that stand up under scrutiny. In Europe, the NIS2 framework is one prominent signal of this broader global direction.
9. Privacy-by-design and selective disclosure accelerate
The balance between transparency and personal privacy is being recalibrated, and by 2026 this is increasingly shaping register design rather than being treated as a policy afterthought. Privacy-by-design is becoming the organising principle: minimise exposure, separate what must be collected from what must be published, and apply role-based access so that legitimate public-interest use is still supported without defaulting to maximum disclosure. The framing set out by the European Data Protection Supervisor is a helpful reference point here: Privacy by design
In practice, this shift is already visible in the growing focus on restricting sensitive personal details such as directors’ home addresses. The UK approach separates a public service address from a protected home address, limiting disclosure of residential address information. Other countries like Ireland recently consulted on proposals to restrict access to director’s addresses and soon many others will follow suit.
10. Digital wallets move into the heart of corporate compliance
Digital wallets are rapidly evolving from consumer identity tools into infrastructure for business and regulatory interaction. By 2026, wallets will increasingly support the signing, sealing, and exchange of verified corporate information, reducing repetitive compliance tasks and enabling secure reuse of trusted data.
The EU’s push toward European Business Wallets signals a broader direction of travel. For registers, wallets offer a practical way to operationalise prove once, reuse everywhere while strengthening interoperability and user experience.
Looking ahead to 2026, corporate registers are at an inflection point. The path forward is not about adopting individual technologies in isolation, but about coherent, capability-led evolution. Registers that succeed will be those that deliberately strengthen their role as Single Sources of Truth, invest in interoperability and resilience, and align technology choices with clear institutional outcomes.
It is an exciting time to be working in this space. As we look toward 2026, we are deeply engaged in product development, global interoperability initiatives through MetaReg, and registry modernisation programmes with leading registries around the world. Alongside this, our advisory workshops, research, and capability assessments continue to inform practical change on the ground.
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