What is the beneficial ownership threshold for a company buying property?

25% or more, and it comes from the Act, not the Rules — the string "25%" does not appear in the Rules 2025 at all. Section 5 defines a beneficial owner as an individual who ultimately owns, directly or indirectly, 25% or more of the customer, OR who controls it directly or indirectly. The percentage attaches only to the ownership limb; control has no threshold and is defined separately in s 11 (capacity to cast more than half the votes, holding more than half the issued share capital, capacity to control the composition of the board, or capacity to determine the outcome of decisions about financial and operating policies, including through practical influence). An individual with no shares at all can be a beneficial owner. Where the customer is a body corporate, partnership or unincorporated association and you have taken all reasonable steps but cannot establish any beneficial owner, Rule 6-8(1) lets you collect and risk-appropriately verify the identity of the chief executive officer (or equivalent) instead, provided you record the steps taken and the difficulties encountered. That fallback does not extend to trusts.

Do I have to verify every beneficiary of a discretionary trust?

No. Where beneficiaries are a class (for example, 'the children of the settlor'), document the class description. Verify any named beneficiary with a fixed entitlement of 25% or more, the trustee, the settlor, and any person with power to appoint or remove the trustee.

Where can I confirm an SMSF exists?

Super Fund Lookup is the ATO's register of SMSF compliance statuses. It confirms the fund's name, ABN and ABN status, fund type, a contact address, current compliance status and previous names — but not trustee names, member names or financial details, so it cannot verify the trustee structure. Trustee identity has to come from the trust deed, and where there is a corporate trustee, from the ASIC extract.

CDD on companies, trusts, and SMSFs as buyers

How to conduct customer due diligence on corporate buyers, family trusts, unit trusts, and self-managed superannuation funds — including how to identify beneficial owners through ownership chains.

In short

Look through the entity to the natural persons behind it. A beneficial owner is defined in s 5 of the Act as an individual who ultimately owns, directly or indirectly, 25% or more of the customer — or who controls it, which has no percentage and is defined separately in s 11. For a company that means holders of 25% or more plus anyone with control; where you have taken all reasonable steps and cannot establish any beneficial owner, Rule 6-8(1) lets you fall back to the chief executive officer or equivalent, provided you record the steps and the difficulties. For a trust or an SMSF, Rule 6-3 applies: collect the control structure and the identity of any settlor, appointor, guardian or protector, the trustees, and each beneficiary — or a class description where the nature of the trust means identifying each beneficiary is not possible. The Rules require you to collect all of this; how much you verify is set by the customer's ML/TF risk under s 28(3)(d).

Corporate, trust, and SMSF buyers are common in Australian real estate, particularly in premium and investment segments. The AML/CTF Rules 2025 require materially more verification for these entities than for individuals, and the work is concentrated in one place: identifying the natural persons behind the legal structure.

The principle is straightforward. A company or trust is a legal construct. Behind it sit individuals who ultimately own or control the assets. The Rules require you to identify those individuals — not just the entity on the contract.

Companies. Confirm the company exists on the ASIC register: full company name, ACN, registered office. Verify the natural person signing the contract on the company's behalf. Identify any natural person who holds 25% or more of the issued capital and verify them as you would any individual buyer. Where a company is itself majority-owned by another company, trace the chain until you reach natural persons at the 25% threshold. Where no person meets the threshold, fall back to the senior managing official.

Discretionary trusts. Obtain the trust deed or a certified extract. Verify the trustee — for a corporate trustee, apply the company process and verify each director. Verify the settlor. Where a named beneficiary holds a fixed entitlement of 25% or more, verify them. Where beneficiaries are a class (for example, "the children of the settlor"), document the class description. You are not required to verify every class member. Identify any person with power to appoint or remove the trustee and verify them — the appointor often holds the real control.

Unit trusts. Unitholders with 25% or more of total units are beneficial owners and must be verified. The process mirrors major-shareholder verification in a company.

SMSFs. Confirm the fund exists and is compliant via the ATO's Super Fund Lookup. Verify each trustee: for individual-trustee funds, every member is a trustee and must be verified; for corporate-trustee funds, apply the company process to the trustee entity and verify each director. Every member of an SMSF is a beneficial owner.

When to escalate to ECDD. Overseas entities, structures with opaque ownership chains, entities operating in or from FATF Call for Action jurisdictions (Iran, DPRK, Myanmar at the February 2026 plenary), and structures where the chain cannot be resolved to natural persons at the 25% threshold all warrant enhanced customer due diligence. Where you cannot resolve the ownership structure after all reasonable steps, you are not automatically blocked: Rule 6-8(1) allows a body corporate, partnership or unincorporated association to fall back to the chief executive officer (or equivalent) on a recorded set of steps and difficulties, and Rule 6-33(2) and (3) deem the matter established in a real estate brokering matter where the customer has not cooperated — provided you also record your consideration of whether a suspicious matter reporting obligation arises. Rule 9-4A then makes that non-cooperation a mandatory input to the s 41 suspicion test.

Operationally, the simplest discipline is to request the ASIC extract or trust deed before signing the agency agreement. Resolving the chain late — particularly close to settlement — is where most agencies will get caught out.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the beneficial ownership threshold for a company buying property?: 25% or more, and it comes from the Act, not the Rules — the string "25%" does not appear in the Rules 2025 at all. Section 5 defines a beneficial owner as an individual who ultimately owns, directly or indirectly, 25% or more of the customer, OR who controls it directly or indirectly. The percentage attaches only to the ownership limb; control has no threshold and is defined separately in s 11 (capacity to cast more than half the votes, holding more than half the issued share capital, capacity to control the composition of the board, or capacity to determine the outcome of decisions about financial and operating policies, including through practical influence). An individual with no shares at all can be a beneficial owner. Where the customer is a body corporate, partnership or unincorporated association and you have taken all reasonable steps but cannot establish any beneficial owner, Rule 6-8(1) lets you collect and risk-appropriately verify the identity of the chief executive officer (or equivalent) instead, provided you record the steps taken and the difficulties encountered. That fallback does not extend to trusts.
Do I have to verify every beneficiary of a discretionary trust?: No. Where beneficiaries are a class (for example, 'the children of the settlor'), document the class description. Verify any named beneficiary with a fixed entitlement of 25% or more, the trustee, the settlor, and any person with power to appoint or remove the trustee.
Where can I confirm an SMSF exists?: Super Fund Lookup is the ATO's register of SMSF compliance statuses. It confirms the fund's name, ABN and ABN status, fund type, a contact address, current compliance status and previous names — but not trustee names, member names or financial details, so it cannot verify the trustee structure. Trustee identity has to come from the trust deed, and where there is a corporate trustee, from the ASIC extract.

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