Data Lineage

Introduction

Accurate counterparty data is only half of business verification — the other half is knowing
where it came from. A company's registered address, an individual's date of birth, a tax
identification number: each of these shows a single value in the case, and until now nothing
told you whether it came from an official register, from a data provider, from the client
portal, or from a colleague who typed it in.

Data Lineage attaches that history to every property. For each one you can see which sources
reported which value and when, and every change made to it since the case was created.

This matters in three situations:

• Judging how much confidence to place in a value before approving a case
• Defending a decision in an audit, where an undifferentiated record is an exposure
• Understanding why a value disagrees with what your customer declared

How It Works

Data Lineage records two different kinds of event, and keeping them apart is what makes the
history readable.

• Observations: a source reported a value. Registers and business data providers observe
  company properties; identity checks and document analysis observe individual properties. An
  observation is a statement about what a source saw — it never changes the value stored in
  the case.
• Edits: someone changed the value. Edits carry the previous value, the new one, who made
  the change and through which channel — the console, the client portal, or the API.
• Several values at once: because observations never overwrite anything, a property can
  carry the value currently stored plus everything the sources reported. That is how
  disagreement becomes visible.
• No configuration: there is nothing to enable per property and no data to migrate. The
  history is built from the checks, provider responses and activity already in the case.

Where You See It

An indicator appears at the end of any property row that has at least one source behind it. A
property no source has reported shows nothing at all.

The shape carries the meaning rather than a colour: a green or red mark would read as a
verdict on the value itself, which is the job of your checks and your risk scoring.

Clicking the row opens a panel with two tabs:

• Values shows one card per distinct value, with the sources that reported it — logo,
  source name, attribution and date — and a count such as 2 observations · 1 edit. The value
  currently stored is marked Current value and shown first.
• Timeline shows observations and changes together, most recent first, so you can read how
  the property evolved.

Applying an Observed Value

On any value card that is not the current one, Use value replaces the stored value with
the observed one. This is the fastest way to correct a property a customer mistyped when a
register has already reported the right value, and the replacement is itself recorded as a
change, with your name on it.

Coverage

Company properties are observed by the business data providers connected to official
registers: name, commercial name, registration number and date, country, status, legal form,
address and its components, tax identification number, classifications, share capital and
website. The provider that reported a value is named on the card.

Individual properties are observed by checks — identity document and identity
verification for names, date and place of birth, nationality and gender; document analysis for
proof of address and banking information.

Changes are recorded on every property, including your custom properties.

Two limits are worth knowing before you rely on it. Individuals returned by a register are not
yet connected to property history, so an individual's sources are their checks. And ownership
and voting-rights percentages have no history: unravelling combines several providers into a
single figure, which is not the same thing as a source reporting a value.

Disagreement between sources is shown, never announced. You see two value cards and decide;
there is no score, no severity and no automatic resolution.

API

Property origins are available on the REST API by adding property_origin=true when
retrieving a case, a company or an individual. The response lists, for each property, the
current value and every source that reported one, with its date and origin. You can learn more
in our API documentation.