why does the bank want to know which other companies we are affiliated with

The bank assesses UBOs, group structure and concentration risk

The bank usually asks this to verify three things: who the ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) are, how the business is connected within a group or chain of other companies, and whether there are dependencies that affect credit risk. This is part of the customer due diligence that banks are required to carry out under the Wwft. The question therefore rarely arises out of curiosity — it is linked to the bank's own statutory obligation to investigate its business customers.

In practice, the question usually splits into two parts. The first part concerns ownership and control: who are the shareholders, is there a parent company, are there subsidiaries. This overlaps with what has already been established about the registration number under which the enterprise is registered, as the group structure can often be traced back to the registration in the Commercial Register. The second part concerns commercial relationships: major customers, major suppliers, joint ventures. The latter is what the bank needs to assess concentration risk — what happens to the creditworthiness of the business if one major customer falls away. This is a different perspective than with the question about the countries where the business has establishments, which is more about operational diversification than ownership.

Where this comes from: the Commercial Register and the Wwft

The basic information on legal form, management and shareholder structure that banks request largely corresponds with what is already publicly recorded under the Commercial Register Act 2007. What the bank additionally asks for — the nature of business relationships with other companies, and their importance for continuity — does not follow from a single article provided here as a source, but from the bank's own risk assessment as a Wwft institution. To answer this, it helps to distinguish between what is factually recorded in the Commercial Register and what the bank asks as an additional, customer-specific assessment: the former can be traced to an official source, the latter cannot.