Jurisdictions: ASIC and the states and territories

Australia's company register is national, but it was not always so, and business names were state-based until 2012. ASIC took over company registration from the state corporate affairs offices in 1991 and has run the national Business Names Register since 28 May 2012. The register still records which jurisdiction "owns" each name, and ASIC's public information service is organised around jurisdictions: ASIC itself, plus each state and territory. asicapi defaults every request to the ASIC jurisdiction, which is what almost everyone wants, and exposes the jurisdiction codes so you can read where a record came from.

ASIC and the states

Before 1991 each state and territory registered its own companies under a uniform Companies Code. When the national scheme began, ASIC (then the Australian Securities Commission) migrated those records and gave each company an ACN. A company registered in Victoria in 1948 therefore shows stateOfRegistration of VIC, a placeOfRegistration of VICTORIA and a previousStateNumber such as C0123456X, but is controlled by ASIC.

ASIC also acted as a bureau for the states, processing and publishing their business name registers and some other state-law registers (such as associations) through its systems. Each state remained the controlling jurisdiction for its own names and set its own fees and product availability. That is why the register carries two separate code tables: states and territories as geographic places, and controlling jurisdictions as regulators.

States and territories

The state table describes where something is: a company's state of registration, an address, a pre-ASIC document, or the responsible state for a state-registered name.

The external territories (Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island, Jervis Bay Territory and Norfolk Island) appear because the Corporations Act 2001 extends to them and ASIC registered names for them.

Controlling jurisdictions

The controlling jurisdiction is the regulator that owns the record and whose rules govern it.

Code ASIC covers every company, registrable body, scheme and, since 2012, every business name. The state and territory codes ACT, NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, TAS and NT are the jurisdictions that used ASIC's bureau service for their own registers. CCK, CXR, JBT and NFK are the external territories.

Business names moved to ASIC in 2012

Until 27 May 2012 a business name had to be registered separately in every state where it was used, each with its own registration number and renewal date. The Business Names Registration Act 2011 replaced those eight registers with one national register administered by ASIC. Existing names were migrated with their original state registration numbers, which is why a business name match still shows a stateNumber and a state even though its controllingJurisdiction is always ASIC. ASIC's rule is explicit: for business names the controlling jurisdiction is always ASIC, even for names registered before 28 May 2012. See business names.

Why Victoria is not a jurisdiction for the API

ASIC's public information service supports the ASIC jurisdiction and every state and territory except Victoria. Victoria ran its own business names and associations systems and never used ASIC's bureau service, so there are no Victorian jurisdiction products to request. VIC remains in the controlling jurisdictions table because migrated records can reference it, and it is of course a valid state for company registrations and addresses. A request with jurisdiction=VIC is rejected with product_unavailable_in_jurisdiction.

The jurisdiction parameter

GET /v1/companies/search accepts a jurisdiction query parameter taking a controlling jurisdiction code. It defaults to ASIC and you can almost always leave it there: the ASIC jurisdiction searches every company, scheme, trust and reservation together with the business names from all states and territories, and it is free of ASIC fees. A state code restricts the search to that state's name index plus ASIC company names, which is only useful when working with the residual state-law registers such as associations; state indexes may charge their own fee, which is why POST /v1/companies/{id}/extracts accepts a waiverToken.

curl "https://api.asicapi.dev/v1/companies/search?q=ACME%20WIDGETS&jurisdiction=ASIC" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASICAPI_KEY"

{
  "object": "companyMatch",
  "name": "ACME WIDGETS PTY LTD",
  "isFormerName": false,
  "score": 100,
  "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
  },
  "stateNumber": "C0123456X",
  "asicIdentifier": null,
  "registrationDate": "1948-07-06",
  "reviewDate": "2026-07-06",
  "state": { "code": "VIC", "label": "Victoria" },
  "controllingJurisdiction": { "code": "ASIC", "label": "Australian Securities and Investments Commission" },
  "partialAddress": { "locality": "MELBOURNE", "state": "VIC", "postcode": "3000" }
}

GET /v1/business-names/{id} takes the same parameter and requires it when id is a state registration number, because the same number can exist in more than one state's index.

Errors

State registration numbers versus ASIC identifiers

ASIC-registered organisations have a nine-digit ACN, ARBN or ARSN with a check digit (see ACN, ABN, ARBN and ARSN). State-registered names have a state registration number instead, which begins with a letter A to Z or a digit and follows that state's format, for example BN98765432 or B1234567. Name reservations and some other records have neither and carry an ASIC identifier that begins with a special character such as * or +. Search results return whichever applies in company.acn, stateNumber or asicIdentifier, and the business names and company endpoints accept the corresponding value as {id}.

Related