Help Center/Linking beneficial owners to clients

Linking beneficial owners to clients

In brief: How to link a company's BO to an individual you've already onboarded.

When a beneficial owner of a company is also someone your firm has onboarded as an individual client, link the two so:

  • Their KYC evidence is referenced from the company's file.
  • Their Relationships tab shows every company they appear on.
  • Future Compliance Pack exports for the company can bundle the linked person's KYC evidence (coming in a follow-up phase).

Where you do the linking

Open the company profile → Overview tab → Beneficial Owners card. Every BO of owner_type = individual shows a small Link to client button at the bottom of its row.

How to link

  1. Click Link to client on the BO row.
  2. Search by name (minimum 2 characters). Results are scoped to your firm's individual clients only — you can't link to a person in another firm (RLS enforces this server-side).
  3. Click the right person from the results.

The BO row now shows a green Linked: {name} chip with two controls:

  • External-link icon — jump straight to the linked person's profile.
  • × icon — remove the link (the BO row stays; only the link is cleared).

What "linked" means

  • It writes the individual's clients.id into client_beneficial_owners.linked_client_id for the BO row.
  • The BO row itself (display name, ownership %, PSC flag, etc.) is unchanged — the link is metadata on top of the existing record.
  • It does not copy any KYC evidence between the two profiles — the link is a reference, not a copy.

Seeing the reverse view

Open the linked individual profile → Relationships tab. At the top of the tab there's a new Beneficial-owner relationships card listing every company in your firm where this person appears as a BO, with ownership %, PSC flag, and a quick-jump link to each company profile.

When to link vs not

✅ Link when: the BO is someone you've onboarded under your firm already (e.g. a director who's also a private client of yours).

❌ Don't link when: the BO is a third party your firm has no direct relationship with. The BO row alone is sufficient — linking to a placeholder client record creates audit confusion.

What happens if the linked person is deleted

The linked_client_id FK has ON DELETE SET NULL. If the individual client is soft-deleted, the BO row's link is automatically cleared — but the BO row itself, and its display name / ownership / PSC flag, are preserved. The audit history of the link is in the firm audit log.

What's NOT in this phase

  • Compliance Pack auto-bundling of linked-BO KYC PDFs — the current Compliance Pack is firm-wide (3 PDFs: MLRO Annual, PCP, FWRA + uploaded evidence). A per-company pack that embeds linked BO KYC is a separate phase.
  • Companies House auto-import of officers/PSCs — that's the next KYB phase (Phase 52). Today you record BOs manually and link them as needed.
  • Cross-firm BO sharing — by design, links are firm-scoped.

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