Only one estate agency* in the UK has signed up to become a UK-regulated agent to verify overseas entities, new data shows.

Analysis by Thirdfort shows that in total, 183 firms have registered with Companies House to become UK-regulated agents since the Register of Overseas Entities (ROE) came was introduced on 1 August 2022, with entities given a six-month transitional period.

Such agents can complete verification checks on beneficial owners of an overseas entity. This number represents an increase of 37, up from 146 since Thirdfort previously analysed the figures in March 2023.

Of these businesses, just 31 are law firms – or 0.3% of the 9,341 law firms in England and Wales, according to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.

Of the remaining 152 firms registered, 97 are accountancy firms, and just one is an estate agency. The rest are a mixture of business services, company formation, wealth management or other financial services firms.

Harriet Holmes, AML Services Manager at Thirdfort, said: “We’ve seen a notable increase in the number of overseas entities complying with the new rules. Yet law firms and estate agents remain cautious about verifying these entities. This is no surprise, given the numerous warnings about additional regulatory requirements and the associated risks.

“Accountancy firms are now undertaking the lion’s share of verification work and we’ve seen similar warnings, from organisations such as the Institute of Financial Accountants (IFA), about the legal, regulatory and reputational risks.”

This analysis follows a recent announcement from the government that the ROE now has more than 30,000 registrations.

According to Companies House, the ROE has a compliance rate of around 90%, and the data on the register has been accessed nearly 1 million times. Yet, there remain concerns around how the new rules can be circumvented, including ownership through trusts, and via jurisdictions where information about who owns that company is not public.

A report from the University of Warwick’s CAGE Research Centre found that 152,000 properties in England and Wales are currently held by overseas entities, though information about beneficial ownership is not available for 71% of them.”

Update – issued on 28 February at 1.40pm:  

Since the article was published, Companies House has advised Thirdfort that the publicly available data does not constitute the full list of regulated agents. As such, they have asked us to publish the following:

*This analysis refers to publicly available data on the number of firms registered to become UK-regulated agents to verify overseas entities. This doesn’t constitute a complete list. There are more than 2,000 UK-regulated agents.