KYC documents for a Romanian company: the working list

A bank opening an account, a payment processor onboarding a merchant, a corporate client vetting a supplier: sooner or later every compliance process asks for "the company documents" of a Romanian entity. The phrase is vague; the actual set is not. This is the list that satisfies most KYC files, what each document proves, and where it comes from, whether you are the Romanian company assembling its own file or the foreign team requesting one.

The core set

First, proof of registration: the registration certificate (certificat de înregistrare), the one-page document with the company's CUI issued at incorporation, held by the company itself. Second, proof of current status: the Trade Register certificate, issued fresh by ONRC, which most reviewers want no older than 30 days; unlike the registration certificate, anyone can obtain it, including the requesting party directly through our service. Third, the constitutive act (articles of association), held by the company, with its amendments. Fourth, proof of beneficial ownership, covered below. Fifth, identity documents of the legal representative and of each beneficial owner, which only the people themselves can provide.

The UBO piece, where files get stuck

Anti-money-laundering rules require the file to establish the ultimate beneficial owners, the natural persons behind the structure. For a Romanian company the formal proof is the extract from the UBO register (Registrul Beneficiarilor Reali) held by ONRC, and this is the document foreign teams struggle with, because public access to that register ended in 2022 after a EU Court ruling. The company's own representative can always obtain it, and in practice the fastest route from either side is ordering the UBO extract online with the company's CUI: 149 RON, about €29, by email in about ten minutes during registry hours. The register's mechanics, who counts as a UBO and what the extract contains are in the UBO register guide. Where the file also wants the ownership chain shown rather than asserted, add a Trade Register certificate per layer, as described in finding directors and shareholders.

Supporting evidence reviewers add

Depending on risk appetite: latest financial statements, which in Romania are public and free, see where to find them; a VAT registration check, one minute and free, see verifying the VAT number; confirmation the company is not fiscally inactive and not in insolvency proceedings. Our instant check report bundles these status checks into one verdict document for 39 RON, which many teams attach to the file as a dated snapshot.

Language, signatures, freshness

Romanian institutions issue documents in Romanian; most EU reviewers accept them with a certified translation, and the ONRC documents arrive as PDFs with the institution's qualified electronic signature, valid under eIDAS across the EU. The signed PDF is the original, so forward the file itself, not a scan of a printout. Freshness beats completeness: a file with a week-old Trade Register certificate and a current UBO extract reads better than a thick folder of last year's papers. Since both refresh in minutes, regenerate them at submission time. The rest of the verification sequence lives in the due-diligence checklist.

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