Another case could be an engineering firm undertaking an environmental site assessment. The company would want to ensure the client wasn’t liable for a problem. That means the engineering firm must look back as far as possible and determine previous owners, businesses, and use cases.

People could typically find the owners themselves, but that means money for access to data sources and time to go through them, correlating information. “A lot of things we do for [customers] is a replacement for things that are inefficient for them to do,” Frank said.

This doesn’t mean that every owner can always be found. Some people take extensive measures to stay anonymous, like registering in states that don’t readily provide identifying information or using a nest of multiple legal entities, one owning another which might own another.

“We chose our words to say [our information is] ‘more complete,’” says Frank. “We can’t solve the unsolvable if someone is working very, very hard to [hide their identity].” But keeping hidden can be harder than someone might think. “Even these organizations file taxes, they do other things. By going to different places, you can find things that aren’t obvious.”

Although the True Owner system isn’t standalone, Frank says the company often licenses data to others in other fields or use cases that aren’t strict competitors.