A Business Profile costs $5.50, takes under fifteen minutes to arrive, and you do not need an account to buy one. You search for the entity, add the profile to your cart, pay by card or online banking, and it lands in your email.
Raffles Corporate Services works with a panel of experienced Singapore law firms who offer cost-effective and efficient legal service and advice. This article is general information only and is not legal advice.
That is the whole transaction. The part worth reading is everything around it: what the document actually contains, when a Business Profile is the wrong purchase, and the one design decision in Bizfile that costs people money every week.
What a Business Profile is
A Business Profile is ACRA’s official extract of what the Registrar currently holds about a registered entity. It is the standard answer to “prove this company exists and tell me who is behind it”.
For a private limited company, it will typically show:
- Registered name, unique entity number (UEN) and registration date
- Entity status, for example live, struck off or terminated
- Registered office address
- Principal activities, by SSIC code
- Issued and paid-up share capital
- Directors, company secretary and, where appointed, the chief executive officer
- Shareholders and their shareholdings
- Date of the last annual return filed
For a sole proprietorship or partnership registered under the Business Names Registration Act 2014, the shape is different: owners and partners rather than directors and shareholders, and a registration expiry date rather than an annual return date.
Banks, landlords, insurers, government agencies, grant assessors and overseas counterparties all ask for this document. Most of them will not accept a screenshot of a Bizfile search result, because a search result is free and a profile is dated, paid for and traceable.
The cost and what you get for it
| What you need to know | Details |
|---|---|
| Cost per Business Profile | $5.50 |
| Payment methods | Credit card, debit card or online banking |
| Delivery time | Within 15 minutes |
| Login required | No, guest checkout is available |
| Refunds for the wrong entity | None |
| What you receive | Two emails: one with the download instructions, one with your receipt |
The refund line is not a formality. ACRA does not reverse a Business Profile purchase because you bought the wrong company, and on a $5.50 item nobody is going to argue about it. On a due diligence exercise where you are buying twenty profiles, the arithmetic changes.
The steps, in order
- Go to Bizfile. If you want your purchase history kept, log in first with Singpass as an individual user or Corppass as a business user. Otherwise skip straight to the search.
- Use the entity search. Enter the exact entity name or, far better, the UEN.
- In the search results, confirm you have the right entity before you do anything else. Check the UEN character by character.
- Click Add to cart against that entity’s profile.
- Open the cart from the icon at the top of the page.
- Tick the checkbox next to each profile you want, then click Checkout.
- Enter your name and the email address the profile should go to. Confirm the email is correct and accept the terms.
- Review, then pay by card or online banking.
- On the acknowledgement screen, download your receipt and your product. The download can take up to fifteen minutes to become available.
If you logged in with Corppass
Check the entity shown on the top menu bar before you buy. If you hold positions in more than one company, Bizfile will have put you into one of them by default and it may not be the one you have in mind. Our guide to logging in to Bizfile as a business user covers switching profiles properly, and the individual user route via Singpass explains when Corppass is not what you want at all.
When you should not be buying one
Three situations where $5.50 is the wrong answer.
You are an officer or member of the company. Directors, company secretaries, chief executive officers and shareholders can pull their own company’s information free of charge from the free business products area of Bizfile. Paying for your own profile is a common and entirely avoidable mistake.
You have just filed something. If you have registered an entity, filed an annual return or renewed a registration, ACRA sends a free Business Profile to your Bizfile inbox. Buying one in the same week is money thrown away. That mechanism has its own quirks, which we set out in downloading a free Business Profile after an eligible filing.
You want information about a person, not a company. A Business Profile tells you who is involved in one entity. It will not tell you what else those people are involved in. For that you need a People Profile, which is a different product at a materially higher price.
What goes wrong in practice
Buying the profile of a similarly named entity. Singapore has a lot of companies whose names differ by one word, one abbreviation or a “(S)”. Search by UEN wherever you possibly can. If all you have is a name from an invoice or an email signature, resolve it to a UEN first, then buy. There is no refund, and the profile you bought is not evidence of anything about the company you meant.
Typing the email address wrong at checkout. The delivery email is the only place the product goes. Bizfile asks you to confirm it because people get it wrong. If it bounces into a mistyped address, you are buying it again.
Expecting a ceased entity to look complete. Business Profiles are available for entities that are no longer live, including struck off and terminated ones, and that is genuinely useful when you are chasing a counterparty who has quietly disappeared. But the profile of a ceased entity carries less than a live one. Addresses in particular may not be shown. If you are trying to serve documents on a struck off company, the profile alone will probably not get you there, and the restoration route becomes the relevant question.
Treating an uncertified download as a certified extract. What you buy is an official but uncertified electronic product. Where a court, a foreign registry or a bank in another jurisdiction asks for a certified copy, that is a separate product and a separate fee. Ask the requesting party which one they actually need before you buy either.
Assuming the profile is current to the minute. It reflects what has been lodged. If a director resigned three weeks ago and nobody filed it, the profile shows the director. That is a limitation of the source, not of the product, and it is why a profile is a starting point in due diligence rather than the end of it.
Reading a Business Profile like a professional
The information most people skip is the information that tells you the most.
Date of last annual return. A private company that has not filed for two years is a company with a problem, and often a company heading for strike off. Compare the date against the company’s financial year end.
Share capital versus the story you are being told. A company presenting itself as substantial with $1 of paid-up capital is not necessarily a problem, but it is a question.
Officer churn. Two company secretaries in eighteen months, or a director appointed and ceased within a quarter, usually means something. Profiles show dates of appointment and cessation, so the pattern is visible.
Corporate shareholders. If the shareholder is another entity rather than an individual, you have not finished. You will need that entity’s profile too, and possibly the one above it. Budget accordingly.
Registered office address. If it is a corporate service provider’s address, the company is administered by a third party. That is entirely normal in Singapore and tells you nothing bad, but it does tell you where correspondence actually lands.
If you are not yet comfortable in the platform generally, start with what Bizfile actually is and what you can and cannot do in it and then your first fifteen minutes in Bizfile.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a Singpass or Corppass account to buy a Business Profile?
No. Guest checkout is available and works fine. You only need an entity name or UEN, an email address and a payment method. Logging in is worth it if you buy profiles regularly, because your purchase history is then kept in one place rather than scattered across old emails.
How much does a Singapore Business Profile cost?
$5.50 per profile, payable by credit card, debit card or online banking. There are no refunds for buying the wrong entity, so confirm the UEN before you check out. The product is usually available to download within fifteen minutes of successful payment.
Can I buy a Business Profile for a company that has been struck off?
Yes. Profiles are available for entities with non-live status, including struck off and terminated ones. The content is more limited than for a live entity, and some details such as the entity address may not appear. It remains the best single record of who was involved and when.
Is a Business Profile the same as a certified extract?
No. The standard purchase is an official but uncertified electronic document. Certification is a separate ACRA product with its own fee. Banks and agencies in Singapore generally accept the uncertified version; overseas registries and courts frequently do not. Ask before you buy.
What is the difference between a Business Profile and a People Profile?
A Business Profile is entity-first: one company, and everyone attached to it. A People Profile is person-first: one individual, and every entity they are attached to. If you are checking a counterparty company, buy the Business Profile. If you are checking an individual’s track record, buy the People Profile.
Why has my Business Profile not arrived?
Check the email address you entered at checkout, then check the spam folder. Delivery is normally within fifteen minutes. If you logged in rather than checking out as a guest, the product will also be reachable from your Bizfile account, which is the strongest practical argument for logging in.
When $5.50 is the cheapest thing you will do all week
A Business Profile is the least expensive piece of due diligence available in Singapore. It is also the one most often skipped, usually by a business owner who is about to extend credit, sign a distribution agreement or take on a new supplier on the strength of a good meeting.
Raffles Corporate Services runs entity checks for clients before they commit, reads the profile properly rather than glancing at the first page, and tells them what the filing history is actually saying. If you are looking at a counterparty and something feels slightly off, that is usually worth a short conversation before the contract rather than after it.
You can reach us through Raffles Corporate Services, or read more on Singapore corporate secretarial practice at Singapore Secretary Services. ACRA’s own fee schedules and information product pages sit on acra.gov.sg.
— The Editorial Team, Raffles Corporate Services
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