KYB, or know your business, is the set of checks a firm runs to confirm that a business customer is real, who owns and controls it, what it does, and whether it poses a financial crime risk, both before the relationship starts and while it lasts. It applies customer due diligence to a company rather than to an individual.
Why does KYB matter once AI agents act?
KYB evidence is scattered. Company registries, filed accounts, shareholder records, director lists, licences, websites and screening results all sit in different places and arrive in different forms. Gathering and reconciling them is slow work for people and suits agents well.
The judgement is harder. Complex ownership chains, trusts, nominee shareholders and businesses in high-risk sectors need someone who can weigh what is missing as well as what is present. The FATF Recommendations set the international standard: a risk-based approach, customer due diligence, and identifying the beneficial owners who ultimately own or control the business. An agent can find the owners; a person decides whether the picture is clear enough.
How does KYB work in practice?
- Existence: confirm the business is registered and active.
- Control: identify directors and others who run it.
- Ownership: trace beneficial owners through every layer, then run identity checks on each.
- Activity: understand what the business does and why it wants the account.
- Screening: sanctions, politically exposed persons and adverse media, for the business and its people.
- Risk rating: set the level of ongoing monitoring.
Where each fact comes from matters. A registry extract comes from a named authority. An organisation chart supplied by the applicant is only declared. A claim on the business's website is external. An agent should record the source of every fact so a reviewer can see which parts are proven.
What does that look like in an example?
A payments firm onboards an online homeware retailer whose parent is a holding company registered abroad. The agent pulls both registry records, maps the ownership through two layers, and finds that a large stake is held through a family trust. It cannot see the trust deed, so it marks the trust's beneficiaries as declared, not verified, and drafts a request for the deed. A compliance analyst reviews the file, sends the request and holds the decision until the deed arrives. The agent's role in onboarding is examined in can an AI agent onboard a business customer?, and the workflow in how to process business account opening applications with an AI agent.
How is KYB different from KYC?
KYC verifies an individual: who they are, where they live, whether they pose a risk. KYB verifies an organisation and then reaches through it to the individuals who own and control it, each of whom needs KYC. KYB therefore contains KYC, many times over for a complex structure. The extra work in KYB is tracing ownership and understanding a business model, neither of which arises for a personal customer.
KYB also differs from credit analysis of a business, such as spreading financial statements for business lending. KYB asks whether you should deal with the business at all; credit analysis asks whether to lend to it.
Where Pryme fits
Through the Pryme Context Protocol, each fact in a KYB file carries its provenance: a registry extract is signed by a named authority, an applicant's ownership chart is declared, a claim on a website is external. The reviewer sees at once which parts of the picture are proven and which still rest on the applicant's word.
Questions people ask
Does KYB include checks on individuals?
Yes. Beneficial owners, directors and others with control need identity checks and screening as individuals.
How often should KYB be refreshed?
On a schedule set by the customer's risk rating, and whenever something changes, such as new owners, a new line of business or a screening hit. The guide to AI agents in banking covers how far an agent may act on those triggers.