Unwrapping Complex Trust & Company Structures

For conveyancers, lawyers and agents, few parts of a matter take longer than a trust or a company. Before anyone can be verified, someone has to read the trust deed, work out who owns and controls what, and type every trustee, director and beneficiary into the system by hand.

It's slow and repetitive, and it's where most errors creep in. With AML/CTF obligations now applying across the property sector, getting beneficial ownership right has never mattered more.

Our latest releases take most of that work off your desk.

Upload the document. Livesign does the reading.

Trust deeds. Upload a deed and Livesign extracts the structure and the people in it: trustees, beneficiaries, appointors, guardians, settlors and protectors. Interpreting who owns and controls a trust is one of the most confusing parts of compliance across the industry. Livesign now does most of that interpretation for you.

ASIC company extracts. Upload a company search and Livesign pulls out the company's details, directors and shareholders. It works for corporate trustees and corporate beneficiaries alike, so nobody has to retype a thing.

Real structures have layers. Livesign unwraps them.

Structures are rarely one level deep. A family trust might have a corporate trustee. That company might be owned by another trust, and that trust might have its own corporate beneficiary.

To meet your obligations, you need to follow the chain all the way to the individuals at the end of it. Livesign isn't limited to a single layer. It unwraps each layer in turn, linking every trust and company to the right parent, until it reaches the people who actually need to be verified. Five layers deep is no problem.

The result is a clear, connected picture of who sits behind the entity, rather than a flat list of unrelated names you have to piece together yourself.

Every uploaded deed or extract is also saved against the entity it created, so the source document is on file when you, or an auditor, need it.

No extra charge

Some platforms charge extra to map trusts and companies. Livesign doesn't.

Uploading a deed, reading a company extract and building the full structure are all part of your standard matter. The only additional cost is an ASIC or company search, and only if you choose to order one. Livesign always asks first.

No surprise search fees

Unwrapping a structure sometimes means ordering an ASIC search for a company further down the chain, and those searches carry a fee.

Livesign won't order them automatically. Before any paid search is ordered to go another layer deeper, Livesign stops and asks whether you'd like to proceed. Search fees can't quietly pile up across a complex structure without you knowing or agreeing. You decide what's ordered, and when.

You stay in control

Nothing is filled in behind your back. Livesign presents what it extracted as suggestions, and you confirm each party before it's created. You get the speed without giving up the review.

The right setup for every structure

When you add a party, you choose the setup that matches the contract: individuals buying in their own names, a company, a corporate trustee (for example, Smith Nominees Pty Ltd as trustee for the Smith Family Trust), or individual trustees. Individual trustees have their own setup, with no company form, no ABN and no company screens to work around.

Each entity shows what it still needs. If a trust is missing a key position holder, a green Required card appears. Once it's done, the card turns grey, so gaps are easy to spot well before the final step.

One person, one check, one charge

In family structures, the same person often holds several roles. The director of the trustee company might also be an appointor and a beneficiary.

Livesign recognises people by email address and offers to reuse their existing record, so you add them once and tick every role they hold on a single screen. They verify their identity once, and you pay one fee, however many roles or entities they sit across.

If they were verified on an earlier matter, you can reuse that check at a reduced reverification fee. That includes people set up from an uploaded deed or company search.

Ask for exactly what you need

When you issue a matter, you can request specific documents, such as a current trust deed or a company extract. Your client sees each request along with your reason for it, and Livesign tracks what's still outstanding. That means far fewer chasing emails.

What this means for your firm

• Complex, multi-layered structures unwrapped in minutes, not hours
• Much less retyping, and fewer errors
• No extra charge for the feature
• Search fees only ever ordered with your approval
• Clients verified once, however many roles they hold
• Source documents filed where you can find them

Your firm still decides who needs to be identified on each matter under its own AML/CTF program. Livesign takes away the manual work around that decision.

See it on a real structure

Pick your most complicated trust matter from last month, and we'll show you how it builds in Livesign.

Book a 15-minute demo