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Asia-Pacific company registries: one identifier per country, wildly different depth
Verifying a company across Asia-Pacific means learning a different register per country — and the depth gap is enormous. Korea publishes IFRS financial statements as open data; Vietnam publishes name, status and address. This guide maps the identifier, the depth and the right use for each of the region's major registers.
The identifier map
| Country | Identifier | Register | Depth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | UEN | ACRA | Identity, entity type, status |
| Taiwan | UBN | GCIS | Directors, shareholdings, capital, financials |
| South Korea | Stock code / corp code | OpenDART (FSS) | IFRS financials, shareholders, directors |
| Vietnam | Tax code | Business registry | Name, status, address |
| Thailand | Juristic ID (13 digits) | DBD | Five-year financials, directors, shareholders |
| Australia | ABN / ACN | ABR | Entity type, GST status, business names |
| Israel | Company number | Registrar of Companies | Identity, status, filings |
Singapore: one number for everything
Singapore's UEN is the cleanest identifier design in the region. One number covers companies, partnerships, societies and government bodies, and it is used across every government interaction. Countries where the tax number, the statistical number and the registry number differ create reconciliation work that Singapore simply does not have.
ACRA's published layer is identity-focused — entity type, status, registration date. For firmographics (revenue, employees, industry detail) you layer enrichment on top of the verified UEN.
Korea and Taiwan: financial depth that is unusual anywhere
South Korea's OpenDART, run by the Financial Supervisory Service, publishes IFRS financial statements, shareholder structures and director information for listed companies. In most markets that depth sits behind an expensive terminal subscription; in Korea it is an open API.
Taiwan's GCIS is comparable in ambition: directors, shareholdings, capital and financial data keyed on the Unified Business Number. Between them, these two registers make East Asian listed-company research cheaper than European equivalents — an inversion of the usual pattern.
Korea OpenDART data → · Taiwan GCIS data →
Vietnam: status is the field that matters
Vietnam's registry keys on the tax code and publishes legal name, international and short name, operating status and registered address. It is a lean record, and the single most valuable field is status — it distinguishes an actively trading entity from one that has suspended operations, which is exactly the question a counterparty check asks.
Thailand, Australia, Israel
- Thailand (DBD) — five-year financial statements, directors, shareholders and foreign-ownership detail by 13-digit juristic ID. Unusually deep for South-East Asia.
- Australia (ABR) — ABN, ACN, entity type, GST registration status and trading names. GST status is the practical verification signal.
- Israel (Registrar of Companies) — identity, status and filing history for Israeli entities.
What these registers will not give you
Contact data. Registered addresses are standard; phone and email are rare across the region, because these registers exist for legal verification rather than commercial outreach. The workable pattern is two-step: verify the entity in the register, then enrich it from public web sources for contactability. Company enrichment fills that second step by name or domain.
The one regional exception worth knowing is India, where B2B marketplace data adds a supplier layer registries do not cover — see the India B2B data stack.
Practical notes for building on these sources
- Normalise the identifier first. UBN, UEN, ABN and tax codes all have different lengths and check-digit rules. Validate before you query; a malformed number returns "not found", which looks identical to "does not exist".
- Expect non-Latin names. Korean, Taiwanese and Thai registers publish local-script names, sometimes with an English variant. Store both; matching on the English name alone silently misses entities.
- Financial statements are periodic. Korea and Thailand publish by reporting period. A company that has not yet filed for the current year is not missing data — it is on schedule.
There is no single Asian model — and that is the planning problem
European registers converge on a shared shape: an identifier, a status, a NACE-aligned activity code, filed accounts. Asia-Pacific has no such convergence. Each jurisdiction solved the problem independently, and the result is that a pipeline built for one country transfers poorly to the next.
| Jurisdiction | What the register leads with | Planning implication |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore | UEN — one identifier across all government agencies | Cleanest joins in the region |
| South Korea | Disclosure-led: listed companies file extensively | Deep on listed, thin on private |
| Taiwan | Unified business number, strong on registered capital | Capital is a usable size proxy |
| Thailand | Registration and status, lighter on financials | Good for verification, weak for sizing |
| Vietnam | Tax-code-centred, rapid formation volumes | Freshness matters more than depth |
| Australia | ABN/ACN split, with a public trading-status check | Active-status checking is genuinely strong |
Singapore's UEN is the outlier worth understanding, because it solves a problem most countries never even attempted: it is one identifier used across every government agency. Company registration, tax, licensing and procurement all reference the same number. Where other jurisdictions force you to bridge a company number to a tax number to a licence number, Singapore hands you a single key.
The design lesson for anyone building regional coverage: do not model Asia-Pacific as one region with country variants. Model it as a set of independent registers that happen to share a continent, and normalise upward into your own schema rather than expecting the sources to agree. The KYB guide covers how to build a check that degrades gracefully when a jurisdiction simply does not publish a field.
Frequently asked questions
What is a UEN?
Singapore's single identifier for every registered entity, used across all government interactions — unusually clean as a join key.
Which Asian register is deepest financially?
South Korea's OpenDART, with IFRS statements, shareholders and directors for listed companies. Taiwan's GCIS is close behind.
How do you verify a Vietnamese company?
By tax code — the registry returns legal name, status and address, and status is the field that answers the compliance question.
Do these registers have phone numbers?
Rarely. They are built for legal verification. For contact data, verify in the register then enrich from public web sources.