The attack surface of a centralized beneficial ownership registry scales with its scope. Swiss wealth managers are now pointing to that constraint directly, calling for a delay to their own register after a comparable system in Liechtenstein was hacked, and placing cybersecurity at the center of their objections.
The register under discussion tracks the ultimate owners of more than 500,000 companies and other legal entities. Ultimate beneficial ownership data, naming the individuals who hold final control or economic interest in a structure, is a high-value target for the same reason it is useful to regulators: it maps control across entire corporate ecosystems in one place. A breach does not affect one entity. It affects all of them.
Swiss wealth managers raised cybersecurity concerns alongside the call for delay, citing the Liechtenstein hack as evidence of the exposure that registers of this scope carry.