How to Run an ASIC Company and Director Search

Before you invest through a company, you should know what the public record says about it. In Australia that record is held by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, and most of what you need is either free or costs a few dollars.

Start with the free search

ASIC Connect’s company search is free and will tell you, for any registered Australian company:

• Its ACN and ABN
• Its registration date — how long it has actually existed
• Its status — registered, deregistered, under external administration, or strike-off action in progress
• Its type and class — proprietary, public, limited by shares
• Its registered office and principal place of business

That free result already answers several useful questions. A company incorporated three months ago being presented as an experienced developer is worth a second look. So is a registered office that turns out to be an accountant’s suburban shopfront shared with two hundred other entities.

The status field matters most. “Under external administration” or “strike-off action in progress” are the two you never want to see attached to a company that is currently asking you for money.

Then pay for the extract

The free search will not give you directors. For that you need a current company extract, purchased through an ASIC information broker. It is typically in the range of $9–$40 depending on the broker and the level of detail.

A current extract gives you:

• Current officeholders — directors and secretaries, with their names, addresses and dates of appointment
• Share structure — classes, numbers issued, and who holds them
• Charges — security interests registered over the company’s assets
• Document lodgement history — what has been filed and when

A historical extract costs a little more and adds former officeholders and past changes. If you are assessing someone’s track record rather than just the company’s current position, the historical extract is the one you want.

Reading the officeholder list

Once you have names, the search turns from the company to the people. Two patterns are worth looking for.

Directorship history. A person’s name can be searched across ASIC’s registers to find other companies they have been an officeholder of. What you are looking for is not simply a long list — experienced operators legitimately accumulate entities — but a pattern of companies that were wound up, deregistered, or placed into administration while that person was a director.

Recent resignations. An officeholder who resigned from a company shortly before it collapsed, and whose resignation was lodged late, is a specific and well-known pattern.

Charges and security interests

The charges section, and the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR) alongside it, tells you who has security over the company’s assets. This is the section investors most often skip and most often regret skipping.

If a company has granted security to a financier, that financier ranks ahead of you. In a development structure where investors have been told the project will be funded from equity rather than debt, the appearance of a registered charge is a direct contradiction of that representation, and it is discoverable from the public record for the price of a search.

Check the register again periodically. A charge registered after you invested is exactly the kind of change you want to find out about promptly rather than at the end.

What ASIC’s registers will not tell you

The registers are a record of filings, not an assessment of them. ASIC does not verify that what a company lodges is accurate, and registration is not endorsement of any kind.

The registers also say nothing about:

• Whether the company is solvent today
• Whether its directors are personally bankrupt — that is AFSA’s register
• Whether the company has been sued, or by whom
• Whether anyone has complained about it

For a complete picture you want the ASIC extract, the AFSA bankruptcy search, the relevant occupational licence register, and a court file search. Together they take an afternoon.

A practical order of operations

1. Free ASIC company search — confirm the entity exists, is registered, and is not in administration.
2. Current company extract — get the directors, shareholders and charges.
3. Historical extract — get former officeholders and the change history.
4. Search each director’s name for other directorships.
5. Run a bankruptcy search on each director.
6. Check any occupational licence each director claims to hold.

None of this is difficult and none of it requires a professional. It requires deciding to do it before the money moves rather than afterwards.