Company charges, security interests and the PPSR

A company charge is a security interest granted by a company over its property to secure a debt, most often a mortgage or debenture in favour of a bank. Until 30 January 2012 the Corporations Act 2001 required companies to register charges with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, and ASIC's register of company charges was the place a lender or buyer checked for existing security over a company's assets. That role has moved to the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR), but ASIC still holds the historical record, and a satisfied charges history remains a standard part of a historical company extract.

Fixed, floating and both

A fixed charge attaches to specific identified assets such as land, plant or a particular receivable; the company cannot dispose of them without the chargee's consent. A floating charge hovers over a changing pool of assets, typically stock in trade and book debts, and lets the company keep dealing with them in the ordinary course of business until the charge "crystallises" on default. Most bank securities were expressed as both fixed and floating, so B is the most common charge type on the register.

What ASIC recorded for each charge

Charge statuses come from the charge statuses table:

SATF means the debt was repaid or the security released and a notice of satisfaction (or a memorandum of satisfaction) was lodged. DELT means ASIC removed the record, which can happen where a charge was registered in error or duplicated.

The PPSR transition on 30 January 2012

The Personal Property Securities Act 2009 replaced more than 70 Commonwealth, state and territory registers of security interests with the single national PPSR at the "registration commencement time", 30 January 2012. From that moment:

• Security interests over a company's personal property are registered on the PPSR at ppsr.gov.au, not with ASIC.
• Charges that were current at the commencement time were migrated to the PPSR automatically.
• ASIC retained the details of charges that had already been satisfied, and continues to make them available.
• Security over land was never on the ASIC charges register and remains with the state land titles offices.

The practical rule for a searcher today is: check the PPSR for anything a company currently owes on security, and check ASIC for the history of security the company granted and discharged before 2012. A long list of satisfied bank charges is a normal sign of a trading history; a charge satisfied shortly before a company's collapse is worth a closer look.

Charges appear only in historical extracts

Because ASIC no longer holds current charges, a current company extract contains no charges section at all; the charges key is null. Charges are only part of a historical extract, so the flow is to purchase one with POST /v1/companies/{id}/extracts and "type": "historical" (product company_extract_historical), then read GET /v1/companies/{id}/charges free of charge for as long as the extract is retained. See purchasing. If you hold no extract, or only a current one, the endpoint returns extract_required (HTTP 402) with "body": { "type": "historical" } rather than buying anything. If the company has never registered a charge the list is empty. Charges are returned in chronological order of registration, and the image-based charges extract described below is only available for companies (types APTY and APUB) and registrable bodies (types FNOS and RACN).

curl https://api.asicapi.dev/v1/companies/004085616/charges \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASICAPI_KEY"

{
  "object": "list",
  "data": [
    {
      "object": "charge",
      "chargeNumber": "1234567",
      "company": {
        "acn": "004085616",
        "formatted": "004 085 616",
        "numberType": { "code": "ACN", "label": "Australian Company Number" },
        "name": "ACME WIDGETS PTY LTD",
        "type": { "code": "APTY", "label": "Australian Proprietary Company" },
        "status": { "code": "REGD", "label": "Registered" },
        "abn": "53004085616",
        "registeredCharity": false
      },
      "status": { "code": "SATF", "label": "Satisfied" },
      "type": { "code": "B", "label": "Both Fixed & Floating" },
      "registeredAt": "2005-03-14T02:15:00Z",
      "createdAt": "2005-03-10",
      "expiresAt": null,
      "satisfiedAt": "2011-08-01",
      "preAsicChargeNumber": null,
      "chargees": [
        {
          "party": {
            "type": "organisation",
            "person": null,
            "birth": null,
            "organisation": {
              "number": "000000019",
              "numberType": { "code": "ACN", "label": "Australian Company Number" },
              "name": "NATIONAL TRADING BANK LIMITED",
              "abn": null
            }
          }
        }
      ],
      "documents": [
        {
          "object": "document",
          "documentNumber": "0E1876543",
          "formCode": "309",
          "formDescription": "Notification of details of a charge",
          "subForms": [],
          "receivedAt": "2005-03-14",
          "processedAt": "2005-03-14",
          "effectiveAt": null,
          "qualifier": null,
          "pageCount": 6,
          "imaged": true,
          "underRequisition": false,
          "xbrlAvailable": false,
          "xbrlDocumentNumber": null,
          "status": null,
          "priced": true
        },
        {
          "object": "document",
          "documentNumber": "0E4432109",
          "formCode": "312",
          "formDescription": "Notification of discharge or release of property from a charge",
          "subForms": [],
          "receivedAt": "2011-08-01",
          "processedAt": "2011-08-02",
          "effectiveAt": null,
          "qualifier": null,
          "pageCount": 2,
          "imaged": true,
          "underRequisition": false,
          "xbrlAvailable": false,
          "xbrlDocumentNumber": null,
          "status": null,
          "priced": true
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "hasMore": false,
  "nextCursor": null,
  "totalCount": null,
  "extract": { "id": "ext_01J9E2V8K3N7R2", "type": "historical", "purchasedAt": "2026-09-04T02:30:10Z", "asOf": "2026-09-04T02:30:07Z" },
  "meta": { "billable": false, "product": null, "requestId": "req_01J9E2W5X8L1V6" }
}

A single charge can also be fetched by number with GET /v1/charges/{chargeNumber}, which returns the same object and identifies the company that granted it. Pre-ASIC charges migrated from a state register carry the old state number in preAsicChargeNumber and may have registeredAt or type set to null where the state system did not record them.

Chargees

The chargee is the party the security was granted to. Banks and finance companies dominate, but chargees can also be individuals, trustees or related companies in a group. A charge can have several chargees, for example where a syndicate of lenders shared one security or where a security trustee held it for noteholders. Each entry in chargees[] is a party object; organisations carry an ACN where ASIC matched one, otherwise only a name.

The image-based charges extract

Beyond the structured data, ASIC offers a charges extract that consists of images of the relevant sections of the lodged charge documents. It is produced from ASIC's imaging system, so it is an asynchronous order rather than a synchronous extract purchase. Request it with POST /v1/companies/{id}/charges/extract-orders and a delivery method; the response is 202 Accepted with an order of type charges_extract (product charges_extract), and the fee is incurred when the order is accepted. Poll GET /v1/orders/{orderId} or subscribe to the order.ready webhook, then fetch the PDF from GET /v1/orders/{orderId}/download, subject to the same page limits as document images (50 pages by email, 500 by web, larger by post). A company with no charges on record returns no_charges (HTTP 404) at the order step.

The fee ASIC charges for this extract depends on its size. The free company object carries satisfiedChargesExtractSize, which is "small" when the extract has fewer than 10 pages, "large" when it has 10 or more, and null when the company has no satisfied charges. Read it from GET /v1/companies/{id} before ordering so you can tell users what to expect.