The Related Persons API returns all individuals and entities associated with a brokerage account. A related person can be an individual — such as an account owner, beneficiary, trusted contact, or power of attorney holder — or an entity such as a custodian, trustee, or corporate account holder. The type and number of related persons will vary by account type; for example, an IRA may have one or more beneficiaries, while a joint account will have two account owners.

Advisors commonly use this data to review beneficiary details for retirement accounts, access names and addresses of related parties, and populate security-based lending applications — though use cases will vary depending on the needs of the firm.

The Related Persons API is part of the Accounts Management toolbox, complementing the Accounts API by providing a complete picture of all parties connected to an account.

Please note that, at present, we provide related persons information exclusively from the Pershing, Schwab and Fidelity (NFS) custodians. We plan to gradually expand this functionality to include coverage for all custodians that make this data available.

For a list of the most common Related Person types please visit our Data Dictionary.

Use Cases and API Specification

Here are four key use cases where the Related Persons API proves to be exceptionally helpful:

Overseeing all related persons associated with a client's account.
Searching for specific information about an individual.
Bulk loading related persons.
Identifying related persons using their SSN number.

Let's delve into the details of how to use the Related Persons API for each of these use cases.

Method	Endpoint URL	Description
`GET`	`/v2/account-management/related-persons`	Get all related persons for all accounts the application has an access to.
`POST`	`/v2/account-management/related-persons/filter`	Filter related persons by `account_id` or other personal information fields.

Use Case #1: Retrieving all related persons for the client's account

To obtain information about all related persons associated with a particular account, follow these steps:

Retrieve the account_id by using the Filter Accounts API, which allows searching based on various parameters such as name, account_number, account_type, advisor_code, and others. For instance:

curl --request POST 'https://api.bridgeft.com/v2/account-management/accounts/filter' \
     --header 'Authorization: Bearer {YOUR_TOKEN}' \
     --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     --data '{
        "name":"Joe Johns"
}'

Once you have obtained the account_id, make a POST request to the Filter Related Persons endpoint, providing it with this identifier. For example:

curl --request POST 'https://api.bridgeft.com/v2/account-management/related-persons/filter' \
     --header 'Authorization: Bearer {YOUR_TOKEN}' \
     --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     --data-raw '{
    "account_id": 23412
}'

The response will provide information about all related persons in the following JSON payload:

{
    "current_page": 1,
    "data": [
        {
            "account_id": 330156,
            "addresses": [
                {
                    "address_1": "1432 E NUBIAN LN",
                    "address_2": "",
                    "city": "ORANGE",
                    "country": "US",
                    "created_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:22.382767Z",
                    "id": 26555,
                    "postal_code": "928663413",
                    "related_person_id": 32449,
                    "state": "CA",
                    "type": "Mailing",
                    "updated_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:22.382767Z"
                },
                {
                    "address_1": "1432 E NUBIAN LN",
                    "address_2": "",
                    "city": "ORANGE",
                    "country": "US",
                    "created_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:22.382767Z",
                    "id": 31730,
                    "postal_code": "928663413",
                    "related_person_id": 32449,
                    "state": "CA",
                    "type": "Legal",
                    "updated_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:22.382767Z"
                }
            ],
            "created_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:21.950757Z",
            "date_of_birth": null,
            "email": "",
            "entity_name": "O'MALLEY LIVING TRUST",
            "first_name": "",
            "id": 32449,
            "last_name": "",
            "middle_initial": "",
            "object": "account_management.related_person",
            "phone_numbers": [],
            "tax_id_token": "RvHcixZe5XDSEtA5L7UpL8",
            "type": "Trust Name",
            "updated_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:21.950757Z"
        },
        {
            "account_id": 330156,
            "addresses": [
                {
                    "address_1": "1432 E NUBIAN LN",
                    "address_2": "",
                    "city": "ORANGE",
                    "country": "US",
                    "created_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:22.382767Z",
                    "id": 25459,
                    "postal_code": "928663413",
                    "related_person_id": 37333,
                    "state": "CA",
                    "type": "Legal",
                    "updated_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:22.382767Z"
                },
                {
                    "address_1": "1432 E NUBIAN LN",
                    "address_2": "",
                    "city": "ORANGE",
                    "country": "US",
                    "created_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:22.382767Z",
                    "id": 25698,
                    "postal_code": "928663413",
                    "related_person_id": 37333,
                    "state": "CA",
                    "type": "Mailing",
                    "updated_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:22.382767Z"
                }
            ],
            "created_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:21.950757Z",
            "date_of_birth": "1948-12-18",
            "email": "",
            "entity_name": "",
            "first_name": "JOHN",
            "id": 37333,
            "last_name": "O'MALLEY",
            "middle_initial": "T",
            "object": "account_management.related_person",
            "phone_numbers": [],
            "tax_id_token": "RvHcixZe5XDSEtA5L7UpL8",
            "type": "Trustee",
            "updated_at_utc": "2023-10-26T20:13:21.950757Z"
        }
    ],
    "has_next": false,
    "has_previous": false,
    "object": "list",
    "orient": "row",
    "page_size_limit": 10000,
    "total_items": 2,
    "total_pages": 1
}

Use Case #2: Searching for specific information about a related person

If you need to retrieve specific personal information about a particular related person, simply make a call to the Filter Related Persons endpoint, providing the required search parameters. For example:

curl --request POST 'https://api.bridgeft.com/v2/account-management/related-persons/filter' \
    --header 'Authorization: Bearer {YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN}' \
    --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --data '{
   "first_name": "JOHN",
   "last_name": "GROSS"
}

Below are all the fields that can be used for searching:

Field	Type	Description
`id`	string	BridgeFT’s unique ID for this related person record
`account_id`	string	BridgeFT’s Account ID which this person is related to
`account_ids`	string array	BridgeFT’s Account IDs which this person is related to (in case if multiple associations)
`type`	string	The related person type provided by the custodian
`first_name`	string	Related person’s first name
`last_name`	string	Related person’s last name
`middle_initial`	string	Related person’s middle name
`date_of_birth`	string	Related person’s date of birth
`entity_name`	string	Typically a corporate name
`email`	string	Related person’s email address
`tax_id_token`	string	BridgeFT’s Tokenized representation of the related person's Tax ID

The response will provide all the personal information about the requested related person in the following format:

{
  "id": 1,
  "account_id": 23412,
  "type": "sometype",
  "first_name": "JOHN",
  "last_name": "GROSS",
  "middle_initial": "A",
  "date_of_birth": "1995-09-08",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "entity_name": "John Doe's Company",
  "tax_id_token": "asdf1234fasdfa",
  "addresses": [
    {
      "address_1": "123 Example Ln",
      "address_2": "Apt 405",
      "city": "Some City",
      "state": "MO",
      "postal_code": "62324",
      "country": "US",
      "type": "SOMETYPE"
    }
  ],
  "phone_numbers": [
    {
      "phone_number": "5555555555",
      "type": "SOMETYPE"
    },
    {
      "phone_number": "2222222222",
      "type": "SOMETYPE"
    }
  ],
  "created_at_utc": "2023-10-03",
  "updated_at_utc": "2023-10-03"
}

Use Case #3: Bulk load all related persons

You can retrieve records of all related persons for all accounts accessible to your application by using the List All Related Persons endpoint. To do so, send the following request:

curl --request GET 'https://api.bridgeft.com/v2/account-management/related-persons' \
     --header 'Authorization: Bearer {YOUR_TOKEN}' \
     --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \

For large data queries, we recommend setting pagination parameters.

Use Case #4. Identifying related persons using their SSN number

This use case is a variant of the Use Case #2. The key point here is that this enables more specifically matching related persons using a unique tax_id_token. Follow the next steps to utilize person’s SSN and Tax ID token:

Generate a tax_id_token using the persons SSN by querying Tax ID API:

curl --request POST 'https://api.bridgeft.com/v2/account-management/tax-id/000-00-0002' \
     --header 'Authorization: Bearer {YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN}'

In the response you will receive a tokenized representation of the SSN/Tax ID in the following format:

"Pr7myKRzgennb2qGe32i3t"

Now using this token, search all related persons with the matching token. Each person returned will have an account_id associated with them:

curl --request POST 'https://api.bridgeft.com/v2/account-management/related-persons/filter' \
     --header 'Authorization: Bearer {YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN}' \
     --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     --data '{
    "tax_id_token": "Pr7myKRzgennb2qGe32i3t"
}'

This enables you to retrieve details about an account-related person by their SSN or Tax ID number.