A system and method for determining the extent of beneficial ownership of a target business by populating a database structure wherein businesses and ownership relationships between the business are represented by nodes and links. Steps include querying the database to establish the related ownership links; analyzing the query to determine ownership loops; de-looping the ownership relationships; and calculating the percentage ownership of each of the beneficial owners of the target business based on de-looped ownership relationships. A computer readable non-transitory storage medium stores instructions of a computer program, which when executed by a computer system results in performance of steps of the method. A system architecture having features uniquely suited to the task is also disclosed.