Why Live Registry Data Costs More Than Cached

Live registry data costs more than cached data for two reasons. Each live record is pulled from the registry on request, often for a registry fee, and can be sold only once. And live providers must standardise responses from hundreds of registries they don’t control. Cached vendors, meanwhile, sell the same stored copy many times, sometimes refreshing it only every six months.

What you get for the extra cost is current data, which regulators now expect. FATF, the EU’s AMLA and Canada’s FINTRAC all treat how current a record is as part of whether it’s reliable. Below, I will explain where the cost comes from and why it’s worth paying.

How has the market changed?

I've been in this industry for 4 years, and I’ve noticed a remarkable market shift since I started in 2022: a significant rise in demand for live registry retrieval capabilities among KYB data providers.

For nearly fifteen years, Kyckr was one of a handful of providers that offered live, direct connections to company registers. Now, that number has quadrupled.

Of course, many teams still use a traditional cached vendor for initial checks. The problem for them is that they’re not sure where the data came from, or how fresh it is, because the vendors themselves are sometimes reluctant to share their data sources.

Compliance teams fall back on the vendor’s status, particularly if it has a strong reputation. The AMLA’s RTS, in fact, says as much when sourcing KYB data; Article 10 states that “reputable data service providers” count as a reliable source of information.

But no matter how reputable a data service provider is, their reputation doesn’t make their data more current than it really is. Compliance teams still need to validate the data point, because regulators expect them to provide evidence that their onboarding decisions were made on solid grounds, forcing them to go directly to the registry.

What do regulators want from KYB data and documents?

Most regulators now emphasise the need for “independent, reliable” sources of KYB data, the gold standard set by the Financial Action Task Force’s Recommendation 10. That growing list now includes the UK’s Money Laundering Regulations (MLR 2017), Canada’s FINTRAC, and, most recently, the EU’s AMLA.

One of the many ways of stress-testing a source’s reliability is its freshness because a fresh data point is, by definition, more reliable than an outdated one.

The AMLA’s draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) go into this in more detail.

Article 8 says that, when considering whether a source is reliable or not, compliance teams should look at how up-to-date it is. Recital 9 asks whether “the passage of time” has eroded the data point or document reliability.

Canada’s FINTRAC is more explicit. In section 109(2) of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Regulations (SOR/2002-184), it states that a record used to verify a corporation’s identity “must be authentic, valid and current”. Subsection 109(1) goes even further, asking for “the most recent version” of that record.

You’re getting, definitionally, the most current data point or document on a legal entity at that moment, when retrieving it live from the registry. But stale data doesn't meet that requirement.

This is now what regulators expect.

2 reasons why live retrieval is more expensive than cached

I speak to compliance professionals every day. They often say to me, “Live retrieval is obviously great. But why is it more expensive than a cached database?”

It’s true. Live retrieval is usually more expensive. But there are good reasons for it. 

1. Supply versus demand 

When you retrieve a data point on a legal entity from a cached database vendor, you are retrieving a copy that can be resold.

The data point could be days, weeks, months old, but importantly, that cached data vendor can sell that one data point many times over. Live retrieval providers, meanwhile, retrieve each data point at the point of request from the registry – time, date and source stamped. In other words, it is unique; we can only sell it once.

Let’s say a bank orders a profile on Tammas Falconer. Kyckr retrieves it for you, time- and date-stamped. A day later, a law firm wants the same profile on Tammas Falconer. Kyckr goes back to the registry, retrieves it, returning a fresher version with a new time, date and source stamp.

Add to that the fact that many registries charge per document; the overall price adds up. Obviously, if a database vendor only pulls it once, they can charge less.

So, Kyckr sells a unique data point every time, to every customer. A cached data vendor sells the same copy many times over until it refreshes that jurisdiction.

2. We’re not in control of the registries

Cached data vendors are in total control of the infrastructure they’re selling: the latency, responses, and data on their database, enabling them to offer a consistent, uniform experience across all their jurisdictions. Live retrieval is more expensive because it must engineer that consistency, in real time, whenever a request is made.

This is because, to quote Kyckr’s Head of Customer Delivery Andrew Kellett, live retrieval vendors like Kyckr are “at the mercy of registries”.

Lots of backend work must be done to ensure that the user experience is as uniform as possible.

Normalising and structuring raw registry responses, in real time, across hundreds of different registries – all with their own quirks – requires engineering resources, manpower, and money, further increasing the price differential between live and cached data.

2 reasons why live retrieval is worth the extra money

1. You search the universe of legal entities 

When you search for a legal entity in a cached database, that search is limited by the coverage and update frequency of that vendor.

Most traditional cached vendors refresh periodically, and for smaller, less-used jurisdictions, that might only be every six months. That means any company not registered in the last six months won’t be in the database.

Live retrieval works differently. I like to say that it ‘searches the universe of companies’ – in real time, with every search. So, if you submit the correct company information, and the company is registered in the jurisdiction the account holder claims to be registered in, we will find it.

You’re less likely to get a consistently high match rate using the larger cached data vendors. If the jurisdiction you’re searching was only updated four months ago, new companies won’t appear, and director and ownership changes don’t either – all of which carries risk.

The match rate – that ability to search the universe of companies, in real time – is the determinant of value.

2. More value for money

On a purely pay-per-check basis, live retrieval at first appears to be more expensive. But when you start digging into it – considering the problem holistically – a more nuanced picture emerges.

Most cached vendors don’t charge per query. Instead, you pay a licence fee for access to the whole database: a large, fixed sum that covers every jurisdiction they hold, including the many you’ll never search. Many also charge per user, so the cost rises with the size of your team rather than the number of checks you run.

Once you take this into account, what you’re left looking at is a magnificently large, but largely unnecessary dataset – and that pay-per-call pricing gap starts to close significantly.

Search the universe of legal entities, in real time, with Kyckr

Kyckr retrieves data and documents from 300+ official company registries in real time, ensuring your onboarding decisions are made on the most current KYB data available at official company registries. Book a demo to find out more.