Overview
MarineTraffic Enterprise now includes Ultimate Beneficial Owner — UBO — data in vessel ownership information.
The initial rollout focuses on selected commercial tankers, with UBO information shown in the Ownership section of vessel details when available.
UBO data helps users better understand who ultimately owns, controls, or benefits from a vessel, even when the vessel is registered under a company, nominee, or layered ownership structure.
This gives Enterprise users deeper ownership transparency and supports stronger due diligence, risk assessment, compliance checks, underwriting, chartering, and commercial decision-making.
What is a UBO?
An Ultimate Beneficial Owner is the person or entity that ultimately owns, controls, or benefits from a vessel.
In many cases, this is a natural person. In other cases, the UBO may be a family, trust, government, state-owned entity, or another controlling structure.
A vessel may have more than one active UBO. For example, more than one individual or entity may hold a controlling interest in the top-level company connected to the vessel.
Where can I find UBO information?
UBO data appears in the Ownership section of the vessel details page in MarineTraffic Enterprise.
UBO information is shown only when available. If no UBO data is available for a vessel, the UBO section may not appear.
What information is included?
Where available, UBO records may include:
Field | What it means |
UBO name | The person or entity identified as the ultimate beneficial owner |
Entity type | Whether the UBO is an individual, family, trust, government, state-owned entity, or another entity type |
Country of residence | Country associated with the UBO, where available |
Confidence | A certainty indicator for the UBO relationship |
What does confidence mean?
Each UBO record includes a confidence indicator. Confidence reflects the strength and consistency of the supporting ownership evidence.
Confidence level | What it means |
High | Strong supporting evidence |
Medium | Partial or indirect supporting evidence |
Low | Limited evidence, but still considered a plausible ownership match |
Confidence should be treated as an indicator, not a guarantee.
How we determine the UBO?
We start from the vessel’s registered owner and ship manager and work up the ownership chain to resolve who ultimately owns or controls the vessel, including cases where ownership sits behind a holding company, nominee, trust, government, or state-owned entity.
To do that we combine multiple ownership and corporate-intelligence signals, cross-check them for consistency and corroboration, and apply our own entity resolution, transliteration, and validation logic. Every UBO record carries a confidence indicator that reflects the strength and consistency of the supporting evidence, so users can see how well-supported each attribution is.
Why use UBO information?
UBO data can help you:
Investigate the true ownership or control behind a vessel
Strengthen vessel and counterparty due diligence
Identify potential hidden ownership or control relationships
Support compliance, underwriting, chartering, and due diligence workflows
Make more informed commercial decisions before engaging with a vessel or counterparty
Improve transparency when assessing ownership structures
Why might UBO information be missing?
UBO data is shown only where available.
The initial rollout focuses on selected commercial tankers, so UBO information is not currently available across the full maritime fleet. If a vessel does not display UBO information, this does not necessarily mean there is no UBO relationship. It means UBO data is not currently available for that vessel in MarineTraffic.
How often is UBO data refreshed?
UBO data is currently refreshed approximately every 10 days.
This is not a real-time data feed.
Who can access UBO data?
UBO data is available to MarineTraffic Enterprise users as part of the Ownership section.
Need help?
For questions about MarineTraffic Enterprise or ownership data, contact your account manager or reach out to the support team.