Corporate registers have always played a foundational role in economic systems. Today, that role is expanding.
In a world of increasingly mobile capital, digital incorporation, and cross-border corporate activity, registers are no longer simply passive databases, they are active gatekeepers of economic integrity.
One critical vulnerability remains largely unresolved: the inability to see a complete cross-border history of individuals or entities registering or operating across jurisdictions.
When an overseas individual or entity registers a business or is appointed as a director in your jurisdiction, what do you actually know?
Do you know if they have been disqualified elsewhere, linked to insolvencies across multiple countries, involved in patterns of serial incorporations designed to obscure liability, or subject to sanctions or enforcement actions beyond your borders? In most cases, the honest answer is not in real time, or not at all.
Global registry systems remain fragmented. Validation processes stop at national boundaries. What appears compliant domestically may carry significant risk internationally. This creates blind spots. Blind spots create exposure.
Modern corporate registers are increasingly recognised as part of a jurisdiction’s core risk infrastructure. They underpin AML and CFT frameworks, beneficial ownership transparency, sanctions compliance, investor confidence, and international reputation. In many respects, they are the formal gateway into a country’s legitimate economy.
Every incorporation, every director appointment, every ownership change flows through the register. That gives registry authorities a uniquely powerful role. They are not passive databases. They are control points that help safeguard economic integrity.
When high-risk individuals or entities exploit cross-border information gaps, the consequences extend well beyond a single filing. The impact can spread across enforcement agencies, financial institutions, and international partners, affecting trust in the wider system.
Yet registries are often asked to carry this responsibility without matching levels of structural support. Many operate with constrained budgets, legacy systems, limited access to cross-government intelligence, and restricted visibility beyond national borders. Expectations continue to rise, but investment, legislative alignment, and inter-agency coordination often fail to keep pace.
Registers sit at the front line of prevention. Prevention requires visibility, and visibility requires stronger interoperability and sustained institutional backing.
Despite years of discussion in international forums, no scalable global solution yet exists for real-time validation of director, shareholder, or entity history across jurisdictions.
The challenge is complex.
Even where bilateral or regional agreements exist, they rarely enable automated, structured, real-time data exchange. The result is a patchwork of manual requests, slow processes, and reactive enforcement. Prevention remains largely dependent on what a jurisdiction can see within its own borders.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, global money laundering is estimated at 2 to 5 percent of global GDP annually, or between USD 800 billion and 2 trillion.
That estimate does not include the downstream cost of remediation. When weaknesses in transparency or oversight frameworks are exposed, remediation can involve investigations and audits, court proceedings, removal of directors, systemic reviews, legislative reform, and international reputational repair. These processes carry significant financial and political costs.
There is also the reputational impact and the economic consequences of being grey listed. As explored in Foster Moore’s article, What is the Cost of Being Greylisted by FATF?, jurisdictions placed under enhanced monitoring can experience reduced investor confidence, increased due diligence requirements, capital constraints, and broader economic pressure.
These costs are substantial. Prevention requires investment in connectivity, standards, and shared frameworks. While not trivial, preventive investment is typically far less costly than repairing systemic integrity after exposure. For many jurisdictions, the question is shifting from can we afford to invest in interoperability to can we afford not to.
International evidence from AML enforcement, grey-listing impacts, and public sector reform programmes shows that reactive remediation can cost jurisdictions far more than proactive investment in transparency and interoperability frameworks.
Interoperability should not be seen as a technical enhancement. It is strategic infrastructure.
This is not a new idea. The European Interoperability Framework makes clear that interoperability is essential to delivering public services that are seamless, secure, and citizen-centric across borders. It emphasises legal, organisational, semantic, and technical alignment as the foundation for trusted data exchange between public authorities.
At the same time, the Anti Money Laundering Directive 6 adopted by the European Parliament reinforces the expectation that Member States strengthen transparency, accountability, and enforcement in the fight against financial crime. Registers play a central role in this framework, particularly where beneficial ownership, director accountability, and cross-border corporate activity intersect.
Interoperability enables earlier risk detection, smarter validation processes, evidence-based policy decisions, greater international collaboration, and stronger resilience against abuse. It allows jurisdictions to move from reactive enforcement to proactive prevention.
Most importantly, it reinforces the role of the register as a trusted institution in the global economy.
Jurisdictions that move first in building secure, standards-based cross-border connectivity will not only reduce risk. They will strengthen their competitive position as safe, transparent places to do business.
Across the registry community, there is increasing acknowledgement that this challenge must be addressed collectively.
At Foster Moore, we are currently working with industry partners and registry leaders on MetaReg, an initiative designed to explore how structured interoperability between registers could begin to close these cross-border visibility gaps.
It is an ambitious challenge. It has not yet been solved at scale. But the conversation has moved from theoretical to urgent. In a connected world, economic integrity cannot stop at the border. Neither can the safeguards that protect it.
If this conversation resonates with your jurisdiction’s priorities, reach out to us to talk about MetaReg.