Liminal Insights Report

Link Index for Business and Entity Verification

06/12/25

Report Overview

As financial institutions and fintechs scale globally, the ability to verify business legitimacy, uncover ownership structures, and detect fraud has become mission-critical. Business and Entity Verification has moved beyond basic KYB checks. It’s now a critical frontline defense against onboarding fraud, regulatory gaps, and financial crime.

Still, many BEV processes still rely on outdated models: static registries, disjointed systems, and point-in-time checks. These gaps leave organizations exposed—to shell companies, synthetic identities, and high-risk partnerships that slip through manual workflows.

As mandates like the Corporate Transparency Act and 5AMLD tighten the rules, BEV has evolved from a regulatory must-do to a clear competitive edge. Leading institutions are shifting to real-time verification, continuous monitoring, and automation-first platforms that reduce manual burden while increasing onboarding speed and accuracy.

The Link Index™ for Business and Entity Verification benchmarks the top vendors solving for modern BEV use cases. Built on proprietary buyer demand signals, technical analysis, and expert evaluation, this Index helps decision-makers cut through vendor noise and understand who’s delivering real coverage, configurability, and global compliance at scale.

Key Takeways:

BEV is a frontline defense in modern AML strategies.
As financial institutions expand across jurisdictions, verifying business legitimacy, uncovering ownership structures, and detecting fraud are no longer regulatory checkboxes—they are operational imperatives.
Legacy workflows are breaking under pressure.
77% of compliance leaders report challenges with identifying shell companies, and 82% cannot consistently detect synthetic identities in Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) structures—underscoring the need to transition from static, manual processes to real-time intelligence.
BEV consolidation and AI adoption are reshaping the market.
53% of institutions are consolidating BEV vendors to reduce complexity, while 95% plan to deploy AI agents for ongoing monitoring and decision automation by 2027.
Configurable, automation-first platforms are emerging as leaders.
This Index evaluates 109 solutions and highlights the top 20 vendors delivering real-time registry data, dynamic ownership resolution, and seamless integration with existing AML and KYB workflows.

Methodology
The Link Index offers a detailed analysis and ranking of leading vendors for specific use cases, leveraging robust data and insights from Liminal’s market and competitive intelligence platform, Link. Liminal’s research team invites solution providers to participate in a company survey and analyst briefing. It uses a proprietary framework to assess and rank product capabilities based on their relevance to market needs. Liminal’s Digital Identity Landscape taxonomy and ontology are central to the Link Index, which precisely evaluates vendor solutions by buyer demand, product capability, and market presence. Liminal conducts a rigorous survey among buyers in the vendor selection process to identify the most in-demand product capabilities and the most valued product components. Market presence criteria included buyer satisfaction, market penetration, and brand recognition. The Link Index was designed to be used to inform go-to-market strategy and execution and provide guidance for solution buyers, specifically:
- Executives in corporate strategy
- Leaders of go-to-market execution
- Practitioners of solution implementation