Where to Buy Singapore Company Information, and Which Product You Actually Need

Official Singapore company information comes from one place: ACRA, sold through Bizfile. There are six product families, they answer different questions, and buying the wrong one is the commonest way people waste money and still end up not knowing what they wanted to know.

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.

Beyond ACRA’s own products, a handful of authorised information service providers repackage ACRA data with their own analytics on top. That is a different purchase for a different purpose, and worth understanding before you assume Bizfile alone will tell you everything.

Here is the map: what each product contains, which question it answers, and where the free route beats the paid one.

What ACRA actually sells

ACRA’s information products are extracts from the register. They are authoritative because they come from the register, not because anyone has analysed them. What you get is what has been lodged.

The CCFP is the one people skip because they have not heard of it, and it is frequently the one they needed. It bundles the business profile with a compliance record and up to three years of financial data and ratios. We break it down in full in our guide to what an ACRA CCFP actually tells you.

Do not buy what you can get free

Before paying for anything, check whether you are entitled to it at no cost.

If you are an active officer or member of the company, a substantial part of the catalogue is free to you through Bizfile: your own company’s business profile and its statutory registers among them. Directors, company secretaries, chief executive officers and shareholders all qualify. There is no cap and no expiry.

Separately, Bizfile’s free search functions will tell you a surprising amount about an entity you have no connection to: whether it exists, its UEN, its status, its registration date. That is often enough to answer the question you actually had. Our guide to Bizfile’s search functions covers what the free search will and will not show you, and what Bizfile actually is sets out the platform as a whole.

The rule of thumb: free search tells you whether an entity exists and what its status is. A paid product tells you who stands behind it and whether it has been behaving.

How buying on Bizfile works

1. Go to Bizfile. For public information products you can buy without logging in as a business user, though logging in makes the purchase history easier to retrieve later.
2. Search for the entity or the person by name or UEN. Confirm you have the right one. Similar names are the single biggest source of error here.
3. Select the information product you want from the entity’s page.
4. Add it to your cart and pay.
5. Download the product. It is delivered digitally, and there is a window in which you can retrieve it before the download link expires.

Two practical notes. First, keep the receipt: our guide to paying ACRA on Bizfile covers what to do when a payment fails or a refund is needed. Second, download promptly. People buy a profile on a Friday, get distracted, and come back after the window has closed.

Product prices are published on Bizfile at the point of purchase and change from time to time, so check the current figure there rather than relying on a number someone quoted you last year.

When ACRA’s own products are not enough

ACRA’s products tell you what has been filed. They do not tell you what it means, they do not aggregate across entities, and they do not score anything.

For that, ACRA authorises a small number of information service providers to redistribute its data with additional services layered on: credit scoring, corporate network mapping, litigation and adverse media screening, portfolio monitoring. The authorised providers are credit bureaux and data analytics firms rather than corporate service providers, and ACRA publishes the current list on its buying business information pages.

You would go to an authorised provider rather than straight to Bizfile when:

• You need to monitor a portfolio of counterparties continuously rather than check one entity once.
• You want relationship mapping across entities and individuals, not a single profile.
• You need a credit score or risk rating rather than raw filed data.
• You want adverse media or litigation screening alongside the registry information.

For a single counterparty check before signing a contract, the ACRA product is almost always the right and cheaper answer.

What goes wrong when people buy company information

Buying a profile on the wrong entity. Singapore has a great many similarly named companies, and group structures frequently use near identical names across several entities. Match the UEN, not the name. A due diligence file built on the wrong UEN is worse than no file at all, because it creates false comfort.

Assuming the profile is a health check. A business profile tells you who the officers and shareholders are and that the entity is live. It does not tell you whether the company files on time, whether it has laid financial statements, or whether it is solvent. That is what the CCFP is for.

Treating a downloaded PDF as certified. A bought product is an authentic ACRA product, but if a foreign authority, a bank or a court requires certification, that is a further step. Our note on the certificate of incumbency covers when the overseas requester wants something beyond a plain download.

Paying for your own registers. Officers and members already have them free. Corporate secretaries buy client registers more often than they should.

Relying on information that has gone stale. An ACRA product is a snapshot at the moment of purchase. A profile pulled in March tells you nothing about a director who resigned in June. For anything that matters, pull it fresh. For anything ongoing, either re-pull or use a provider that monitors.

Forgetting that filed does not mean current. ACRA shows what has been lodged. If a share transfer was agreed but never filed, the register will not show it. The statutory registers held by the Registrar are the legal position, which is exactly why the gap matters. Our piece on the statutory registers every Singapore company must maintain explains what should be there and how the gaps arise.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a Singpass or Corppass account to buy a business profile?
Not for most public information products, which can be purchased and paid for without logging in. Logging in makes it easier to retrieve your purchase history and re-download within the download window, so there is a practical reason to do it.

What is the difference between a Business Profile and a CCFP?
A Business Profile is the registered facts: name, officers, shareholders, capital, activities, addresses. A CCFP includes all of that, plus a compliance record on annual general meetings and annual returns, plus up to three years of financial figures, ratios and the audit opinion.

Can I buy information about a person rather than a company?
Yes. The People Profile is built around an individual rather than an entity, and shows the entities that person is connected to. It is the product to use when you are checking someone’s other directorships and interests rather than a single company.

How long can I download a product after I have paid for it?
Bizfile makes the purchased product available for download for a limited period after payment, after which the link expires. Download it immediately and save it into your own file. Re-obtaining an expired product is avoidable work.

Is ACRA information free for my own company?
Largely, yes. Active directors, company secretaries, chief executive officers and shareholders can download their own company’s business profile and statutory registers at no charge through Bizfile, with no limit on how often.

Should I use an authorised information service provider instead of Bizfile?
Only if you need something ACRA does not sell: credit scoring, ongoing monitoring, network mapping or media screening. For a one-off check on a single counterparty, buy the ACRA product directly. It is the primary source and it costs less.

Knowing which document to ask for

Most of the wasted spend we see on company information is not people buying expensive things. It is people buying cheap things repeatedly, because nobody told them which single document would have answered the question.

Raffles Corporate Services pulls ACRA information products daily for client due diligence, onboarding and transaction work, and we are usually able to tell you in one message which product answers your question and whether you are entitled to it free. If you are building a counterparty checking process rather than doing a one-off search, that is worth getting right at the start.

You can reach us through Raffles Corporate Services, or read more on Singapore corporate secretarial practice at Singapore Secretary Services.

The Editorial Team, Raffles Corporate Services