Asset and identity searches for New Zealand law firms

Advising a client to sue is a costs decision as much as a legal one. Before a statement of claim is drafted, the firm needs to know whether the defendant holds anything worth enforcing against, whether that asset is already encumbered, and whether the defendant can be located and served. Those three questions sit across property records, security interest registrations, company filings, credit reporting data and insolvency events. Answering them piecemeal takes days and leaves the file with a scattered trail of PDFs and no clear record of who looked at what.

intelID returns those elements from one enquiry. Registered property and title data show ownership and interests. PPSR data shows what is already secured and to whom. Companies Office data shows directorships, shareholdings, the registered office and the address for service. Insolvency data shows whether the party is already in bankruptcy, a no-asset procedure or a debt repayment order, which is often the answer that avoids a proceeding that was never going to recover anything. Credit reporting data is available where the firm has a lawful authorised purpose for it under the Credit Reporting Privacy Code 2020.

The same enquiry supports service. A current address confirmed from several licensed sources before an agent is instructed is cheaper than three failed attempts and an application for substituted service. Where the party is a company, the registered office and address for service come from the same result.

The searches a firm actually runs on a pre-litigation file fall into a small set: asset searches to establish recovery position, address history searches to confirm where a defendant can be served, company and director searches to confirm the correct legal entity and its officers, property title searches to confirm registered ownership and encumbrances, PPSR searches to see what is already secured, and insolvency searches to check whether the party is already in a formal insolvency process. Where identity is genuinely in doubt, an identity verification check confirms the firm is dealing with the person it thinks it is.

The sources behind those searches are the ones a firm already knows by name: land and title records held by Land Information New Zealand, company and director filings from the Companies Office, registered financing statements on the Personal Property Securities Register, and bankruptcy and company insolvency data from the New Zealand Insolvency and Trustee Service. Credit reporting and directory data fill in address history where the register is silent. Published court and tribunal decisions establish the litigation history behind a party, and the media archive covers what was reported at the time. Also available: individual credit checks, commercial credit checks and sanctions, PEP and adverse media screening.

A search run in a firm's name is still governed by the Privacy Act 2020. Information must be collected for a lawful purpose connected with a function of the firm, and collection has to be limited to what that purpose actually needs. Credit reporting information carries the further conditions of the Credit Reporting Privacy Code 2020, and access outside a permitted purpose is not something a professional engagement can authorise on its own. Where the file relates to a person rather than a company, the fact that the firm holds an instruction does not itself create an unlimited right to search everything available.

A search is also not a substitute for the formal, certified searches some filings require. Where a court rule or a registry calls for an official search of a particular register, that search still has to be obtained from the register directly. What intelID supports is the enquiry and assessment work that sits before and alongside that, and the record of having made reasonable enquiries.

1. Confirm the correct legal entity with a company and director search, checking the registered office and address for service.
2. Run an asset search covering title, PPSR, company holdings and insolvency status.
3. Where the recovery position looks weak, check insolvency records before committing to a proceeding that will not recover anything.
4. Confirm a current address for service using address history data, corroborating across at least two independent sources.
5. Declare the authorised purpose for each search, which the platform records automatically.
6. Instruct service, or if the first attempt fails, rely on the recorded search history as part of the evidence of reasonable enquiry for a substituted-service application.

A firm is instructed to recover an unpaid invoice from a company that has stopped responding. The registered office on file returns mail unopened. A company search confirms the company is still active and identifies a director who is a natural person. An asset search against the director shows a registered mortgage on one property and no PPSR interests against the company's known equipment. An address history search against the director returns a more recent address corroborated by two sources. The firm proceeds with service at the director's address as agent, with the search record supporting the steps taken if service is later challenged. No names, amounts or outcomes are recorded here, only the sequence followed.

A firm carries responsibility for searches conducted in its name. That responsibility sits with the firm as an agency, not only with the individual who ran the query, and the supervising partner is the person who has to answer for it. intelID is built so that answer is available on demand.

Every account belongs to a named, verified individual. Every search requires an authorised-purpose declaration before results are returned, and the declaration is recorded with the user, the timestamp and the sources queried. Role-based access lets a firm limit which sources junior staff can reach. Nothing in the log can be altered by the person who created it, so a supervising partner reviewing a matter six months later sees what was actually done.

No subject data is used for marketing, resold, or exposed to public indexing. Hosting, encryption and incident handling are set out on the security page, and the statutory position is covered in full on the compliance page.

Reports are for the firm’s own internal business purposes and the purpose declared when the search was run. They may be disclosed to your client, or to a court, tribunal or regulator, in connection with the matter the search was run for. Wider distribution needs our prior written consent. The position is set out in clause 7.1 of our terms and conditions.

Subject data is not used for marketing, is not resold, and is not exposed to public indexing. How a trace runs end to end is on the skip tracing page, the workflow on the platform page, every integrated source and its legal basis on the data sources page, hosting and encryption on the security page, and the statutory position on the compliance page. Pricing is a monthly subscription plus a per-search fee, published on the pricing page. A firm carrying occasional enquiry work is not paying enterprise seat costs to keep the capability available.

Asset searches, address history searches, company and director searches, property title searches, PPSR searches, insolvency searches and search audit logs.

Tracing assets before you litigate and serving documents and address verification in New Zealand.