What does it cost to have your UBO registration arranged?
The costs of a UBO registration depend on who does the work and how complex your business's ownership structure is. If you arrange the registration yourself with the Chamber of Commerce, you pay mainly for time and a fixed amount that the Chamber of Commerce itself determines. If you engage a notary or adviser, an hourly rate or fixed fee is added on top of that, which increases as your structure has more layers or foreign entities.
There is no fixed national tariff for "having a UBO registration arranged", because the registration itself is an administrative action and the guidance surrounding it is a service provided by a third party. The amount you ultimately pay is therefore made up of a number of separate components. This article sets out those components.
Where the amount comes from
The Chamber of Commerce charges a fixed amount for registering a UBO per notification. That amount applies to everyone and does not change depending on the complexity of your business. This part of the costs is therefore predictable and can be found on the Chamber of Commerce website itself.
In addition, there is often a second cost item: the time or rate of the person who prepares the notification for you. With a simple private company with one or two natural persons as ultimate beneficial owners, a bookkeeper or entrepreneur can often handle this themselves. With a structure involving multiple holdings, foreign shareholders or a trust, a notary or legal adviser is often needed, and they charge a fee for analysing the structure and drawing up the correct notification.
A third cost item only arises later: changes. If something changes in the ownership or control structure, the registration must be updated. Whoever does not keep this up to date themselves will pay again for investigation work when a customer, bank or insurer asks for an up-to-date UBO notification.
What determines the amount
The main distinction is whether your structure is simple or layered. A business with one owner who is also the director typically follows a short and inexpensive route. A business with multiple shareholders, a holding structure or a parent company abroad requires more investigation work, and that investigation work is where most of the costs lie, not the registration itself.
The country also plays a role. The registers and the requirements for them differ per member state, and a structure with shareholders in multiple countries often requires coordination between advisers in those countries. You can read more about this in the article on whether the UBO register is arranged differently abroad.
A third factor is how often your structure changes. A stable ownership structure that remains unchanged for years costs little after the initial registration. A business that regularly transfers shares or adds a new holding in between must have the UBO notification checked again each time to see whether it still correct.
Do it yourself or have it arranged
Whether you can do the registration yourself depends greatly on how well you yourself have an overview of who ultimately has control over your business. With a simple structure, this is often clear. If you have any doubt about who exactly qualifies as the ultimate beneficial owner, it is advisable to discuss this with a notary, accountant or lawyer before you submit anything to the Chamber of Commerce, because an incorrect notification may raise questions later. Anyone who wants to know more about this will find a more detailed explanation in the article on whether you can arrange the UBO registration yourself.
The difference with what your customer asks
Important to distinguish: the UBO registration at the KvK is different from the KYB question that a bank, insurer or large customer puts to you. That latter party often asks for an extract or confirmation of your UBO data as part of a broader investigation into your business. The costs of the registration itself are thus separate from the time it takes to provide those same data to different customers over and over again. How these two relate to each other is described in the article on what KYB means and why a customer asks for this.
That repetition is precisely where many entrepreneurs lose time: the same UBO data, the same supporting documents, filled in repeatedly in a different portal. Supplia.eu retrieves that data from one supply chain file and prepares it for confirmation, so you don't have to look it up every time again.
Would you like to know what that looks like in practice, or what topics apply to your business? Do the free check in a few questions or read the other topics in the frequently asked questions. For doubt about your specific structure, a notary, accountant or the Chamber of Commerce itself remains the appropriate point of contact.