Australian Company Registry Data: How to Search ASIC, ABR & ABN Lookup in 2026
Australian company data sits across three federal layers and is materially easier to access than most large jurisdictions, but more architecturally fragmented than it first appears. The corporate layer is the ASIC Companies Register, operated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission — the canonical source of director details, share structures, and corporate filings for the 3.39 million current and historical Australian companies. The business-identity layer is the Australian Business Register (ABR) at abr.business.gov.au, operated by the Australian Taxation Office, which issues the ABN (Australian Business Number) to every business entity regardless of structure. And the tax and AML layers are the Federal Tax Authority and AUSTRAC respectively, holding the data that joins corporate registration to tax compliance and anti-money-laundering supervision.
For anyone running KYB, supplier verification, sanctions screening, and tax-ID checks on Australian counterparties, the landscape is changing more in 2026 than at any point since the Corporations Act 2001 came into force. The AUSTRAC Tranche 2 reforms commence on 1 July 2026, extending AML/CTF obligations to lawyers, accountants, real-estate professionals, conveyancers, dealers in precious metals and stones, and trust and company service providers — approximately 90,000 to 100,000 new reporting entities, the largest expansion of the Australian AML regime in 18 years. Separately, ASIC approved Cboe Australia as a primary listing venue on 7 October 2025, ending the ASX's effective monopoly on large-cap listings. And the failed Modernising Business Registers programme — abandoned in August 2023 after cost overruns from A$480 million to a projected A$2.7 billion — left the ASIC + ABR registries operating as separate systems, with all the data-quality implications that follow.
This guide explains exactly what Australian company data is available, what's free, what costs money, what's restricted by law, how the identifier system actually works (ACN vs ABN vs ARBN vs DIN vs LEI), and how to access it at scale via API and bulk feeds. For the equivalent guides covering other major registries, see Singapore ACRA, Hong Kong ICRIS, UAE, Italy Registro Imprese, and UK Companies House.
The three layers of Australian company data
Most analyses of "Australian company data" treat ASIC as the single source. It is the most important, but it is not the whole picture. Three distinct federal layers exist, each with its own legal framework and access regime — and post-2026 a fourth layer becomes operationally critical for KYB workflows.
abr.business.gov.au. Holds entity name, ABN status (active/cancelled), GST registration status, registered business names, and ABN registration date. The first source any non-ASIC business shows up in.The fifth jurisdiction worth flagging is Cboe Australia (formerly Chi-X Australia). ASIC approved Cboe as a primary listing venue on 7 October 2025 (ASIC media release 25-227MR), ending the ASX's effective monopoly on large-cap listings and creating four licensed primary listing venues in Australia: ASX, Cboe, NSX (National Stock Exchange of Australia), and SSX (Sydney Stock Exchange). Cboe Australia currently holds over 40 unique listings and approximately 35% of daily trading volume. In a separate February 2026 decision, ASIC confirmed Cboe Global Markets is selling Cboe Australia and will oversee the transition to a new owner (ASIC 25-261MR). For KYB workflows, this means the Australian listed-entity dataset is no longer single-source — a "publicly listed Australian company" can now be found on any of four venues.
What the Modernising Business Registers programme failure tells you
The most important fact about Australian registry data architecture in 2026 is what didn't happen. The Australian Government formally abandoned the Modernising Business Registers (MBR) programme in August 2023 after costs ballooned from an initial estimate of approximately A$480 million to a projected A$2.7 billion. The programme had aimed to consolidate the ABR plus 31 separate ASIC registers under a unified system. Its cancellation means:
- ASIC and ABR remain operationally separate. A query against ASIC returns ACN-side data; a query against ABR returns ABN-side data. There is no single API or single search that joins them at the federal level.
- Cross-system reconciliation is the consumer's problem. If you want to know a company's directors (ASIC) and its GST registration status (ABR), you need to make two separate queries and join the results yourself.
- Trading-name visibility changed on 31 October 2025. Unregistered trading names no longer appear in public ABN searches after that date. Businesses operating under informal aliases became harder to identify.
- The data freshness model is event-driven, not synchronised. ASIC updates typically within one business day; ABR updates on its own cadence. KYB workflows touching both sources need to handle the timing skew explicitly.
For operator-grade UAE-Australia or US-Australia KYB comparisons, the MBR failure is the structural fact that explains why Australian "company data" is plural rather than singular. ASIC, ABR, AUSTRAC, ASX, Cboe Australia, and APRA all operate as separate sources.
Every Australian company-data dataset, mapped
Twelve distinct datasets exist across the federal layers. Australia is one of the more access-friendly major jurisdictions: basic identification and corporate filings are free at the federal level, certified extracts and historical documents carry small per-document fees (A$19 for current company extract), and supervisory data (AUSTRAC filings, ASIC enforcement files) is restricted to competent authorities.
Exactly what data is free, paid & restricted
Australia's free tier is broader than Hong Kong's or Italy's because both ASIC and ABR expose the basic identification layer free of charge. The paid tier covers the certified extracts and historical documents. The restricted tier covers supervisory and AML/CTF data.
- Legal entity name
- ACN (Australian Company Number)
- ABN (when linked)
- Company status (registered, deregistered)
- Company type (Pty Ltd, Ltd, NL)
- Registration date
- Registered office state
- Document availability list
asic.gov.au. Returns entity confirmation and the list of available documents, not the document contents themselves.- Entity name (legal & trading)
- ABN (11-digit identifier)
- ABN status (active/cancelled)
- ABN registration date
- Entity type
- GST registration status
- Registered business names
- State of main business activity
- Full current director list
- Director residential addresses
- Secretary and officeholder details
- Ultimate holding company
- Share structure (classes, capital)
- Members register snapshot
- Registered office address
- Principal place of business
- Suspicious Matter Reports (SMRs)
- Threshold Transaction Reports (TTRs)
- International Funds Transfer Instructions
- AML/CTF programme submissions
- Customer Due Diligence findings
- Director ID source data (DIN)
Dataset-by-dataset summary
The same data viewed by source rather than by tier:
| Dataset | Source | Cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| ASIC basic search asic.gov.au |
ASIC | Free | Entity name, ACN, status, type, registration date, registered office state, document availability list. |
| ABN Lookup abr.business.gov.au |
ABR / ATO | Free | ABN, entity name, status, GST registration, ABN registration date, entity type, state of main business activity. |
| data.gov.au weekly snapshot researchdata.edu.au |
ASIC | Free | Point-in-time bulk snapshot of the ASIC Company Register uploaded weekly to data.gov.au. Useful for academic and bulk-analytics use cases. |
| ASX market data asx.com.au |
ASX | Free | Listed-entity profiles, announcements, 10-year price history. Live prices with ~20-minute delay on free tier. |
| Cboe Australia listings cboe.com/markets/au |
Cboe Australia | Free | Listed-entity rules, 40+ listings as primary listing venue (post 7 Oct 2025), trading data with delay. |
| AUSTRAC reporting entity roll austrac.gov.au |
AUSTRAC | Free | List of entities required to report under the AML/CTF Act. Expands to ~190,000+ entities from 1 July 2026 when Tranche 2 commences. |
| APRA-supervised entity list apra.gov.au |
APRA | Free | Public list of all 1,790 APRA-supervised financial institutions — ADIs (banks, building societies, credit unions), general and life insurers, private health insurers, friendly societies, and superannuation trustees. Includes prudential statistics published by APRA as the national statistical agency for the financial sector. |
| GST/PAYG registration status via ABN Lookup |
ATO / ABR | Free | Exposed via ABN Lookup. Indicates whether an entity is registered for Goods and Services Tax (mandatory above A$75,000 turnover) and PAYG. Critical for invoice-validity checks and tax-side counterparty verification. |
| ASIC current company extract per-document PDF |
ASIC | A$19 | Full director list with residential addresses, secretary, officeholders, ultimate holding company, share structure, registered office. |
| ASIC historical company extract per-document PDF |
ASIC | A$19+ | Full change history of directors, officeholders, share structure, and registered office. Required for historical compliance investigations. |
| ASIC document & image catalogue per-document PDF |
ASIC | A$15–40 | Annual returns, change notifications, financial reports, deregistration applications, and other filed documents. Pricing varies by document type. Mailed delivery adds an A$3 service charge; registered-agent service providers mark up further. |
| External Administration filings insolvency events |
ASIC | A$19+ | Notices of appointment of administrators, receivers, liquidators, or scheme administrators. Visible on the free ASIC basic search as a status flag, with full documents per-document priced. Critical KYB red-flag dataset for counterparty risk. |
| Country-by-Country reporting (SGEF) significant global entities |
ASIC (via ATO) | A$19+ | General-purpose financial statements lodged by Significant Global Entities and CBC-reporting entities. Filed with the ATO, passed to ASIC, then purchasable through the ASIC register. Document type code SGEF. Important for large-multinational-subsidiary KYB. |
| ASIC company financial reports large-company filings |
ASIC | Variable | Audited financial reports for proprietary companies above size thresholds (revenue, assets, employees). Smaller proprietary companies are not required to lodge. |
| AUSTRAC SMR/TTR data filed transactions |
AUSTRAC | Restricted | Suspicious Matter Reports, Threshold Transaction Reports, and International Funds Transfer Instructions. Accessible only to AUSTRAC and authorised partner agencies. |
| Director Identification Number (DIN) ABRS-held |
ABRS | Restricted | Director Identification Numbers (mandatory since November 2021). Verifies director identity centrally. Held by ABRS; not publicly searchable by DIN. |
Eight free, six paid, two restricted. Australia is one of the most permissive major jurisdictions for free basic company data — both ASIC and ABR provide their core identification layers without charge. The paid tier is concentrated on per-document extracts, which is more granular than the document-pack model used in Hong Kong or Singapore. Sources: ASIC, ABR/ATO, AUSTRAC, ASX, Cboe Australia (verified May 2026).
The five Australian company identifiers
Australian entities can carry up to five distinct identifiers depending on entity type and regulatory status. Any KYB integration touching Australian counterparties needs to handle all of them on intake.
| Identifier | Issuer | Format | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACN (Australian Company Number) | ASIC | 9-digit numeric (XXX XXX XXX) | The primary identifier for registered companies under the Corporations Act 2001. Issued automatically upon ASIC registration. Persists for the life of the company even through name changes. Only companies receive ACNs — sole traders, partnerships, and trusts do not. |
| ABN (Australian Business Number) | ATO (via ABR) | 11-digit numeric | The federal business identifier for all entities engaged in commercial activity — companies, sole traders, partnerships, trusts. For registered companies, the ABN is typically the ACN with a 2-digit prefix. Required for GST registration, tax invoices, and PAYG compliance. If a supplier does not quote an ABN on an invoice above A$75, the payer must withhold 47% of the payment for tax purposes. |
| ARBN (Australian Registered Body Number) | ASIC | 9-digit numeric | Issued to foreign companies registered to operate in Australia, and to other registrable Australian bodies that are not Corporations Act companies. Foreign companies do not receive an ACN; they receive an ARBN instead. |
| DIN (Director Identification Number) | ABRS | 15-digit numeric | Mandatory since November 2021 for every director of an Australian company, registered foreign company, or Corporations Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander body. A single DIN persists across all directorships and all entities. Not publicly searchable, but provides regulator-side accountability across multiple directorships. |
| LEI (Legal Entity Identifier) | GLEIF / Australian LOU | 20-character (ISO 17442) | Mandatory for any Australian entity subject to OTC derivatives reporting under ASIC Derivative Transaction Rules, swap reporting under EMIR/CFTC, or similar cross-border financial-services obligations. Not all Australian companies have one — primarily ASX/Cboe listed entities, large financial institutions, and entities active in derivatives markets. |
For production-grade Australian KYB integrations, the ACN is the canonical identifier for registered companies; ABN is the canonical identifier for non-company business entities (sole traders, trusts, partnerships) plus any entity with GST or PAYG obligations; ARBN identifies foreign-registered bodies; DIN connects natural persons across multiple directorships on the regulator side; and LEI joins Australian entities to pan-EU and US financial-services reporting feeds for OTC derivatives and large-financial-institution use cases.
Worked example: BHP Group Limited
To anchor the identifier and access mechanics in a concrete record, here is BHP Group Limited — Australia's largest listed company, dual-listed on ASX and the LSE, and one of the most-searched Australian entities on the ASIC register:
004 028 07749 004 028 077Three operational points the example surfaces. First, the ABN/ACN relationship is visible clearly: BHP's ABN 49 004 028 077 is literally the ACN 004 028 077 with the 2-digit prefix 49. This is the canonical pattern for ASIC-registered companies and lets a KYB integration cross-reference the two registries cleanly. Second, listed entities carry significantly more public data than unlisted entities because they file continuous-disclosure under ASX Listing Rule 3.1 and the Corporations Act — price-sensitive information must be disclosed promptly. Third, BHP’s registered office state (Victoria) appears in the free ASIC search but the full street address is in the paid A$19 current extract. The ABN Lookup shows state but not street — consistent with the access split between the two registries.
API and bulk data feeds — the four real paths
For any production KYB or supplier-verification integration that needs structured Australian company data at scale, four distinct access paths exist. Each has materially different coverage, latency, and licensing terms.
Path 1 — The ABN Lookup public API
The Australian Business Register exposes a documented public API at abr.business.gov.au. No authentication required for basic lookups. Returns ABN, entity name, status, GST registration, and entity type. This is the workhorse for high-volume Australian ABN verification — lightweight, free, with predictable rate limits.
Path 2 — ASIC online search and the data.gov.au snapshot
ASIC's online search service supports per-query lookups against the Companies Register. Document-level access (current extracts, historical extracts, financial reports) is per-document priced at A$15–A$40+. ASIC also uploads a point-in-time snapshot of the Company Register weekly to data.gov.au, providing a bulk snapshot for academic and analytics use — though not a real-time feed.
Path 3 — Commercial multi-jurisdiction APIs
Several commercial providers maintain ingestion pipelines across ASIC, ABR, AUSTRAC, ASX, and Cboe Australia, and re-expose the consolidated data through their own APIs with normalised schemas. The advantages: single integration covering all the Australian sources, no need to manage per-source authentication or pricing, English-language documentation, subscription pricing rather than per-document.
Zephira's Australian data is sourced directly from ASIC, the ABR, AUSTRAC, ASX, and Cboe Australia, with Data Provenance attribution on every field. Australian records are joined to Singapore (ACRA), Hong Kong (CR), mainland China (SAMR), the UK (Companies House), Germany (Handelsregister), the UAE (NER), and 100+ other jurisdictions on a single data model.
Path 4 — bulk data feeds
For batch enrichment, data licensing, and offline analytics, bulk delivery via S3 or SFTP is the right model. ASIC's data.gov.au weekly snapshot is the public bulk-feed option; commercial providers offer faster refresh cadences and broader joined datasets. Three things to evaluate when sourcing bulk Australian data: refresh frequency (daily vs weekly), cross-source joining (does the feed pre-join ASIC + ABR + ASX, or deliver them separately?), and resale rights.
Australian entity types — what each one means for KYB
Australian entity types are codified under the Corporations Act 2001 plus the tax-side classifications used by the ATO. Six core forms account for the vast majority of records in any KYB workflow.
| Form | Suffix / category | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Proprietary Limited (Pty Ltd) | Private company | The dominant Australian private-company form. Maximum 50 non-employee shareholders. Cannot raise capital from the public. Two size tiers: large and small proprietary, with different financial-reporting obligations. Over 95% of registered Australian companies are Pty Ltd. |
| Limited (Ltd) | Public company | Can have unlimited shareholders and raise capital publicly. Subject to full Corporations Act disclosure including financial-report lodgement, audit, AGM, and continuous disclosure (if listed). |
| No Liability (NL) | Mining-sector public company | A specific public-company form designed for speculative mining ventures. Shareholders are not liable for unpaid share calls. Historically common in junior mining; rare in other sectors. |
| Sole Trader | Individual | An individual operating a business in their own name. Holds an ABN but no ACN. Personal liability rests with the individual. Common for tradespeople, freelancers, and small operators. |
| Partnership | General or Limited | Two or more persons or entities operating jointly. Holds an ABN; not a Corporations Act entity. Partners are jointly and severally liable in general partnerships. |
| Trust | Discretionary / Unit / Hybrid | Australian trusts are common for asset-protection and tax-planning purposes. Trustees (which may be Pty Ltd companies) hold legal title; beneficiaries hold equitable interests. Tax-transparent for most structures. ABN is held by the trust, not the trustee personally. |
The Corporations Act 2001 divides proprietary companies into two tiers based on size thresholds. A company is classified as a large proprietary company if it satisfies at least two of these three criteria in the financial year: consolidated revenue of A$50 million or more, consolidated gross assets of A$25 million or more, or 100 or more employees. All other Pty Ltd companies are small proprietary.
Large proprietary companies must lodge audited financial reports with ASIC annually. These become available for purchase through the ASIC document & image catalogue. Small proprietary companies generally do not lodge financial reports unless directed to by ASIC, or unless they are controlled by a foreign company, or are part of a significant global entity for tax purposes.
The practical KYB implication: for the vast majority of Australian Pty Ltd companies, audited financial reports simply are not publicly available. ASIC’s register confirms the entity exists, identifies its directors (via the paid extract), and shows external administration status — but balance-sheet and income data is invisible. This is a fundamental architectural fact about Australian private-company data that distinguishes Australia from the UK (Companies House requires financial reports from all companies above a smaller threshold) and aligns it with Singapore (where only public and certain large private companies file accounts).
Where Zephira sources Australian data from — directly
The single most important question for any Australian company-data provider is who their source is. Zephira goes direct, with source attribution visible on every record.
| Layer | Direct government source | Update cadence |
|---|---|---|
| ASIC company register (ACN, status, type, registration, document availability) | ASIC — Australian Securities and Investments Commission | Within 1 business day of filing |
| ABN-side data (ABN, GST, business names, entity type) | ABR / ATO — Australian Business Register | Daily refresh |
| Listed-entity disclosures & substantial shareholdings | ASX + Cboe Australia | Real-time on filing |
| AUSTRAC reporting entity roll | AUSTRAC | Daily refresh |
| Annual financial reports (large proprietary & public companies) | ASIC | Event-driven on lodgement |
| Director residential addresses, share structure, ultimate holding | ASIC (paid extracts) | Pulled on demand per record |
| APRA-supervised financial institutions (banks, insurers, super) | APRA — Australian Prudential Regulation Authority | Monthly statistics; entity list quarterly |
| Business universe and entries/exits across all entity types | ABS — CABEE publication | Annual (August release) |
Every record on the platform carries a Data Provenance panel naming the specific government source and the timestamp of the last refresh. AUSTRAC supervisory data, Director Identification Numbers, and ASIC enforcement-investigation files are not exposed via Zephira to non-authorised parties — those data classes are restricted by Australian law to competent authorities.
Recent and upcoming regulatory developments
Six regulatory milestones shape the Australian company-data landscape from 2021 through 2026. All dates verified from primary sources.
Australian business universe: ABS formation & exit statistics
Before the ASIC and ASX numbers, the broader picture. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publishes annual Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits (CABEE), the canonical primary source for actively trading businesses across all entity types — not just ASIC-registered companies. Latest release: 26 August 2025, reference period July 2021 to June 2025.
Three different headline numbers circulate for "how many companies are there in Australia," and they measure different things. Knowing which is which matters for KYB.
3.39 million — ASIC Companies Register, current + historical. Includes both currently registered companies and all historical (deregistered) entities ever filed under the Corporations Act 2001. This is the figure ASIC Commissioner Kate O'Rourke cited in April 2025. Useful as the "lifetime register size," not as a count of operating businesses.
2,729,648 — ABS, actively trading businesses across all entity types at 30 June 2025. Includes Pty Ltd companies, public companies, sole traders, partnerships, trusts, and other entity forms with active GST registration or profiled-population status. The closest measure to "businesses operating in Australia today."
994,178 — ABS, actively trading employing businesses at 30 June 2025. The subset of the universe that actually employs people. The most operationally relevant for B2B sales sizing, employment-targeting, or supply-chain risk modelling.
For corporate-only counts (Pty Ltd and Ltd, the ASIC-registered subset of actively trading businesses), no single published figure exists — it must be reconstructed from ASIC's current-active register, which is a subset of the 3.39M lifetime total.
Industry breakdown — 2024–25 (top growth & top decline)
The ABS CABEE data also breaks down the universe by ANZSIC industry classification. Verified 2024–25 changes from the August 2025 release:
| Industry | Business count | YoY change | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health Care and Social Assistance | 213,177 | +6.6% | Fastest growth |
| Transport, Postal and Warehousing | 249,289 | +5.1% | 2nd fastest growth |
| Financial and Insurance Services | 133,743 | +3.7% | 3rd fastest growth |
| Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing | 170,890 | −0.8% | Largest decline |
| Retail Trade | 156,169 | −0.4% | 2nd largest decline |
The growth concentration in Health Care, Transport, and Financial Services reflects post-pandemic structural shifts: NDIS-driven health-care fragmentation, the rise of independent logistics and last-mile delivery operators, and the proliferation of fintech and advice firms. The decline in Agriculture and Retail reflects long-running consolidation and digital-native competition. For KYB workflows, this matters because the underlying entity-mix in any given Australian dataset is changing year-on-year.
State and territory breakdown — 2024–25
All states and territories registered net positive growth in 2024–25. The geographic distribution:
| State / Territory | Net change in businesses | YoY growth rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | +20,040 | — | Largest net increase |
| Victoria | +16,486 | — | 2nd largest net increase |
| Western Australia | +10,877 | +4.3% | Largest percentage increase nationally |
| Queensland | Net positive | Net positive | 3rd largest mainland state |
| South Australia, Tasmania, NT, ACT | All net positive | All net positive | Lower absolute numbers |
The geographic concentration matters for KYB workflows that filter by state for jurisdictional risk, ABN registration patterns, or sales-territory analysis. NSW and Victoria together accounted for over half of the 2024–25 net business growth.
Australian registry activity — verified primary-source statistics
Three statistical lenses on the Australian company-data landscape, drawn from primary regulator sources.
ASIC Companies Register scale
ASX listed-entity trajectory, 2022–2026
The structural reasons for the ASX listed-entity decline matter for KYB workflows. Three forces are at work: private-equity take-privates have removed mid-cap companies from public markets at an accelerating pace since 2022; foreign reverse-mergers and de-SPACs have reduced cross-listed counts as global capital concentrates in fewer, larger venues; and the IPO pipeline has slowed materially — with rising compliance costs (continuous disclosure, climate-related disclosure, governance standards) deterring smaller candidates from listing in the first place. For data buyers, this means the ASX listed dataset is shrinking even as the underlying private-company universe expands. The Cboe Australia approval in October 2025 is partly designed to reverse this trend by offering a lower-cost listing alternative.
ASIC enforcement — record 2025
Australian registry data in regional context
How Australia's access regime compares to other major Asia-Pacific jurisdictions:
| Jurisdiction | Total companies | Free basic data | Director details access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 3.39M (ASIC, current + historical) | ASIC basic + free ABN Lookup with public API | Paid — ASIC current company extract (A$19) returns full director list with residential addresses |
| Singapore | ~500,000 (ACRA active) | Basic Bizfile profile free; full profile paid | Paid — basic Bizfile profile shows directors; full profile with addresses requires the paid extract |
| Hong Kong | ~1.55M (Companies Registry, active) | Cyber Search free; documents paid (HK$22+) | Paid — director list returned in Cyber Search document (HK$22+) |
| UK | 5.35M (Companies House, end FYE 2024) | Full company profile free including directors and accounts | Free — full director list including service addresses on every company profile |
| UAE | 1.4M+ (NER, federal) | Name, ERN, trade licence, status, activity, expiry | Restricted — manager and partner data held within emirate registries, not federally aggregated |
Australia's position is operationally similar to Singapore and Hong Kong: solid free basic data, paid per-document extracts for director details, and no free director-addresses lookup. The UK remains the access-regime outlier — the only major jurisdiction where the full director profile is free at the point of use. For multi-jurisdiction KYB workflows that span Australia plus Asia, the access regimes are operationally comparable; for workflows that also span the UK, the structural difference in director-data access architecture is material.
- ACN, ABN, ARBN & ticker lookup
- Real-time queries with SLA
- Data Provenance per field
- S3 or SFTP delivery
- Custom refresh cadence
- Resale rights on commercial plans
- Direct AI-agent integration
- Auth-scoped queries
- Same coverage as the REST API
Frequently asked questions
Where can I search Australian companies for free?
Two free federal sources cover most needs. The ASIC Companies Register at asic.gov.au returns entity name, ACN, status, type, registration date, registered office state, and a list of available documents — with no signup required. The ABN Lookup at abr.business.gov.au, operated by the ATO via the Australian Business Register, returns ABN, entity name, status, GST registration, ABN registration date, entity type, and state of main business activity. ABN Lookup also exposes a documented public API. For a programmatic search joining both sources across 100+ jurisdictions on one schema, Zephira provides free searches at zephira.ai with no signup.
What is the difference between ACN and ABN?
The ACN (Australian Company Number) is a 9-digit identifier issued by ASIC under the Corporations Act 2001, only to registered companies. Sole traders, partnerships, and trusts do not receive an ACN. The ABN (Australian Business Number) is an 11-digit identifier issued by the ATO via the Australian Business Register to all entities engaged in commercial activity, regardless of structure. For ASIC-registered companies, the ABN is typically the ACN with a 2-digit prefix — for example, BHP Group Limited has ACN 004 028 077 and ABN 49 004 028 077. Most KYB integrations need to handle both: ACN for company-specific data through ASIC, ABN for tax-side and non-company business data through ABR.
What are the Tranche 2 AML reforms and when do they take effect?
The Tranche 2 AML/CTF reforms extend Australia's anti-money-laundering regime to lawyers, accountants, conveyancers, real-estate agents and property developers, dealers in precious metals and stones, and trust and company service providers — collectively known as "designated non-financial businesses and professions" (DNFBPs). The legislative foundation was the AML/CTF Amendment Act 2024, passed in late 2024 after more than a decade of delays. AUSTRAC enrolment opens on 31 March 2026 with a hard deadline of 29 July 2026. Obligations commence on 1 July 2026. Approximately 90,000 to 100,000 new reporting entities are expected. Penalties for non-compliance reach up to A$2.22 million per breach for businesses and 10 years imprisonment for individuals. This is the largest expansion of the Australian AML regime in 18 years.
Why are ASIC and ABR separate registries?
They were intended to be unified. The Modernising Business Registers (MBR) programme launched in 2018 aimed to consolidate the ABR and 31 separate ASIC registers into a single system. After cost overruns from an initial A$480 million to a projected A$2.7 billion, alongside pandemic disruptions and inter-agency coordination issues, the Australian Government formally abandoned MBR in August 2023. The cancellation means ASIC and ABR remain operationally separate, with cross-system reconciliation falling to data consumers. For KYB workflows, this is the most important architectural fact about Australian company data: ACN-side and ABN-side data have to be joined by the consumer, not by a federal system.
How do I verify an ABN?
Use the official ABN Lookup at abr.business.gov.au. Enter the 11-digit ABN. The lookup returns entity name, ABN status (active or cancelled), GST registration status, ABN registration date, entity type, and state of main business activity. The service is free, requires no signup, and exposes a documented public API for programmatic verification. The most important practical reason to verify an ABN: under Australian tax law, if a supplier does not quote a valid ABN on an invoice above A$75, the payer must withhold 47% of the payment for tax purposes.
Can I access Australian company data via API?
Yes, via four paths. The ABN Lookup public API at the ABR provides free programmatic access to ABN-side data with no authentication required. ASIC's online search service supports per-query lookups against the Companies Register and weekly bulk snapshots are published to data.gov.au. Commercial multi-jurisdiction APIs aggregate ASIC, ABR, AUSTRAC, ASX and Cboe Australia into one integration with normalised schemas. The Zephira REST API delivers Australian data joined to Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China, the UK, Germany, the UAE, and 100+ other jurisdictions on a single data model, with Data Provenance attribution on every field.
Is there a bulk data feed of the Australian register?
Two options. ASIC uploads a point-in-time snapshot of the Company Register weekly to data.gov.au — free, public, but only weekly cadence and ASIC-side data only. Commercial providers offer bulk delivery via S3 or SFTP at faster refresh cadences with cross-source joining (ASIC + ABR + ASX + AUSTRAC pre-joined on a single schema). Three things to evaluate when sourcing bulk Australian data: refresh frequency (daily vs weekly), cross-source joining (does the feed pre-join ASIC + ABR + ASX, or deliver them separately?), and resale rights. Zephira offers bulk Australian delivery on Business and Enterprise tiers with resale rights included.
What is the Director Identification Number (DIN)?
The Director Identification Number is a 15-digit identifier that every director of an Australian company, registered foreign company, or Corporations Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander body must hold. It has been mandatory since 1 November 2021. A single DIN persists across all of a director's directorships at all entities, providing regulator-side cross-referencing across multiple companies. The DIN is held by ABRS (Australian Business Registry Services) and is not publicly searchable by number. KYB workflows can verify a director's identity through ASIC's paid current company extract (which lists director names and residential addresses), but cannot search ASIC by DIN to find all the entities a director is associated with — that capability is restricted to ASIC, AUSTRAC, and authorised partner agencies.
How current is ASIC Register data?
ASIC updates the Companies Register typically within one business day of filings. The register is event-driven: changes to directors, share structure, registered office, or company status appear as soon as the source filing is registered. ABN Lookup updates on a daily cadence. ASX continuous-disclosure filings appear in real time. The weekly snapshot on data.gov.au is a point-in-time export; for real-time queries, use the live ASIC and ABR endpoints directly. Post-2024 enforcement intensification (H2 2025: A$349.8M in civil penalties, the highest six-month total in ASIC history) has driven materially better filing compliance — the Canva Group fine of A$792,000 in April 2026 for late FY24 financial reports illustrates the new enforcement environment.
Can I bulk-verify Australian companies for KYB and AML?
Yes. The Zephira REST API accepts ACN, ABN, ARBN, ticker, or company name as primary inputs and returns the full Australian profile in JSON. Bulk delivery via S3 or SFTP is available on Business and Enterprise tiers. Australian records are joined to Singapore (ACRA), Hong Kong (CR), mainland China (SAMR), the UK (Companies House), Germany (Handelsregister), the UAE (NER), and 100+ other jurisdictions on a single data model — useful for cross-border supply-chain verification, sanctions screening, and Tranche 2 readiness work for newly-regulated tranche 2 entities preparing for 1 July 2026. AUSTRAC supervisory data and Director Identification Numbers are not exposed via the API to non-authorised parties — those data classes are restricted by Australian law. For broader cross-jurisdiction verification, see free company verification; for VAT/GST-equivalent verification across 100+ jurisdictions, see the VAT number verification guide.
