Company and director
Company and director searches in New Zealand: entities, officers and related parties
Behind most commercial disputes is a question about who actually stands behind the entity, and which other entities that person also stands behind.
The problem this answers
A company name on an invoice is not a counterparty. The counterparty is the people behind it, the entities they also run, and the filing history that shows how the current structure came about.
Working that out on the register one company at a time is slow, and the connections that matter are the ones you only see when several records are read side by side.
What the search returns
- Company registration details: status, incorporation date, NZBN and registered office.
- Directors, with their recorded service details and appointment and cessation dates.
- Shareholders and shareholding allocations, including corporate shareholders.
- Address for service and registered office, which is what service on a company relies on.
- Filing history, and related entities surfaced from shared officers and shared addresses.
When it is used
- Counterparty and supplier due diligence before a contract is signed.
- Establishing who to name, and where to serve, before proceedings are issued.
- Tracing a person through the entities they control when the individual record is thin.
- Recovery work, where a phoenix pattern of related entities is the reason a debt is not being paid.
What it does not establish
- The register records what has been filed. A stale filing is a stale record, and a company that has not updated its officers is a common cause of a wrong assumption.
- Shareholding shows legal ownership as filed, not beneficial ownership or control exercised informally.
- A shared address between two companies is a lead, not proof of a relationship.
The limits on the enquiry
- Companies Office data is accessed under MBIE terms of use, for the purpose declared for the search.
- Director address information available on the public register has been reduced in scope, and an enquiry works with what the register now publishes rather than around it.
- Every search records the user, the time and the declared authorised purpose.
The statutory position is set out in full on the compliance page.
Who may access it
- Verified account holders with a declarable authorised purpose.
How intelID consolidates the result
Company and director records return with property, PPSR, insolvency and address data, so an officer identified on the register is immediately readable against the rest of their position.
Related entities are surfaced in the same result rather than found by running the search again under a different name.
What you pay is the monthly subscription plus the searches you run, set out on the pricing page. Every integrated source and its legal basis is listed on the data sources page.
Questions about company and director
Can I find every company a person is involved in?
An enquiry surfaces entities where the person appears as an officer or shareholder on the register, and related entities linked by shared officers or addresses. Involvement that is not filed will not appear.
Are director addresses still available?
The detail published on the public register has been reduced. An enquiry works with what the register now publishes, and identity is established by corroborating across other records rather than by relying on a single address field.
Does this give me an address for service on a company?
The registered office and address for service as filed are returned. Whether they are current depends on whether the company has kept its filings up to date.
Request access to intelID
Tell us who you are and what you need to search, and we will set up your account. Verification is part of the process and usually straightforward. Most accounts are verified and issued within 2 business days.