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Use case · Fraud detection

Director Network Analysis

Find people who direct multiple companies. Spot shell-network patterns, concentration risk, and serial-incorporation fraud signals before you underwrite.

As at 7 November 2026: you can list the people who direct several companies in Spain, and read one person’s appointments in Spain, France, the United Kingdom and Norway. The cross-company network list is Spain only; Ireland is company-level with no officers, and the other countries return company records without directors. Each call below costs the credits shown.

QuestionCallCreditsWhere
Who directs many companies?GET /directors/network?country=ES&min_companies=102Spain only
Which companies has this person run, past and present?GET /people/{id}2Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Norway
Find a person by nameGET /people/search?name=…&country=…2Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Norway
Who sits on this company’s board now?GET /companies/{id}, field appointments1Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Poland (natural persons masked by the register), the Czech Republic (name and month and year of birth only)

The problem

Single-company KYB lookups treat counterparties as isolated entities. In reality, fraud patterns surface in the network: a person who has incorporated and dissolved 14 companies in three years, a director whose 8 active companies share two registered addresses, a beneficial owner who appears across counterparties in different sectors. None of these signals appear when you only check one counterparty's company file.

The Prometiam /directors/network endpoint queries this graph directly so underwriters and fraud teams can see cross-corporate exposure as a first-class risk dimension.

Two endpoints, two questions

Question 1: "Who else does this person run?"

# Get full appointment history for one person — past + current, across all companies
curl 'https://api.prometiam.com/functions/v1/risk-api/people/990123' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer rk_live_...'

The response includes every appointment that person has ever held — current and historical — across the entire registry. Useful when you want to drill into one specific officer flagged at KYB.

Question 2: "Who are the highest-exposure directors in my market?"

# All people directing 10 or more distinct companies in Spain
curl 'https://api.prometiam.com/functions/v1/risk-api/directors/network?country=ES&min_companies=10&limit=100' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer rk_live_...'

Useful when you want to build a pre-emptive watchlist of high-exposure individuals to flag at any future KYB lookup.

Three patterns worth detecting

Concentration. A person directing 10+ active companies in a narrow sector. Not always fraud, but often a sign of a single point of failure for a portfolio.

Phoenix pattern. Serial incorporation and dissolution: 5+ companies created and dissolved within 18-month windows by the same director. Classic phoenix-fraud or distressed-trading signature.

Address overlap. Multiple companies under the same director sharing an unusual mix of registered addresses. Combined with sanctions screening (beta) on each address, you find shell-network laundering structures.

All three patterns need only the /directors/network endpoint plus a small post-processing step. Concrete recipe:

# Phoenix-pattern leads: directors of 5+ companies with 3+ ended appointments
import os, requests

API = 'https://api.prometiam.com/functions/v1/risk-api'
HEAD = {'Authorization': f'Bearer {os.environ["PROMETIAM_API_KEY"]}'}

network = requests.get(
    f'{API}/directors/network',
    params={'country': 'ES', 'min_companies': 5, 'limit': 200},
    headers=HEAD).json()['data']

phoenix = []
for p in network:
    person = requests.get(f'{API}/people/{p["person_id"]}', params={'country': 'ES'},
                          headers=HEAD).json()['data']
    ended = sum(1 for a in person['appointments']
                if a.get('end_date') and (a.get('is_current') is False))
    if ended >= 3:
        phoenix.append({'person': p, 'ended_appointments': ended})

print(f'{len(phoenix)} directors to review')

What you actually get back

/directors/network response per person:

  • person_id, person_name, is_legal_entity
  • company_count — the number of companies the person is linked to
  • company_ids and company_names — those companies, in the same order

For deeper analysis, drill into a person_id via /people/{id} for the full appointment timeline including past appointments, end dates, and roles.

Pricing fit

/people/{id} and /directors/network are on every plan, from Starter (€9.99/month, 1,000 credits/month); each call costs 2 credits and an error costs nothing.

For batch fraud-screening — e.g. a quarterly run across all Spanish counterparties in your portfolio — Starter covers about 500 network queries a month at 2 credits each, Professional (€29.99/month, 10,000 credits/month) about 5,000 and Scale (€99.99/mo, 50,000 credits/month) about 25,000.

FAQ

What is director-network analysis?
Looking at how individuals connect across companies as directors, officers, or beneficial owners. High cross-exposure is a leading risk signal.

How does Prometiam expose it?
/people/{id} returns one person's full appointment history. /directors/network queries the graph for people directing N or more distinct companies, filterable by country.

Why does this matter for underwriting?
A counterparty whose director runs 12 dissolved-within-18-months SLs is statistically much higher risk than one whose director runs only that company.

What does a fraud-relevant pattern look like?
Concentration, phoenix-pattern, and address overlap. All three are detectable from the two endpoints above.

On the 14-day free trial?
Yes: /people/{id} and /directors/network are on every plan, the trial included (500 credits, 2 credits a call).

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