On March 1, 2021, the technological platform for registering beneficial owners was changed in the Czech Republic.
The register of beneficial owners is now a new part of the public register information system. One of the main reasons for this change is the forthcoming entry into force of the new legislation on the registration of beneficial owners in the form of Act No. 37/2021 Coll. "On the registration of beneficial owners" and Law No. 527/2021. Coll. These laws come into force on June 1, 2021 and introduce a significant number of changes to the operation of the register of beneficial owners.
With the transition to a new information system, a number of visual and functional changes have taken place. At first glance, the unification of the visual form with the form of the public register and collection of documents is obvious. Forms have been redesigned to make them more user-friendly and to make it easier for users to enter data.
An innovation is the implementation of a centralized authorization and authentication component that will be used to electronically identify persons accessing or using records. The implementation of this component has resulted in changes to processes that use unique identifiers. The existing unique identifiers (the so-called JISM and JIOO codes) will be valid until September 1, 2021.
A significant change is the termination of the generation of unique identifiers of the real owner (the so-called JISM code), intended to receive an extract from the application or to pre-fill the data in the proposal for change. Thus, the change will only apply to entities that make the initial entry in the beneficial owner register.
It should be noted right away that these are transitional provisions that will be in effect until the entry into force of the new legislation (until June 1, 2021), which will significantly change a number of conceptual and practical points in the operation of the register of beneficial owners.