Jurisdictions
Hong Kong
How to use Kausate in Hong Kong — what you can call, which identifiers it uses, and which documents you can order
New to the API? Start with the jurisdictions overview, which explains how ordering, identifiers and documents work everywhere.
Operations
7 callable
Documents
4 orderable
Your own registry account
Not needed
Company data here comes directly from Companies Registry.
What you can call here
What each operation does is the same everywhere and is explained on the jurisdictions overview.
| Operation | Status |
|---|---|
| Autocomplete | Live |
| Company search | Live |
| Company report Includes: Registered details, Legal representatives and Shareholders. | Live |
| Shareholder graph | Live |
| List documents | Live |
| Retrieve a document | Live |
| Prefill | Live |
How to search
Start with company search and jurisdictionCode: "hk". Pass the name as companyName. Hong Kong takes no other search criteria.
Examples
{ "jurisdictionCode": "hk", "advancedQuery": { "name": "HSBC" }}The same query also matches 77054426 and 极光.
Company identifiers
Hong Kong has no number-based search: find a company by name, then use the kausateId search returns. These schemes label the values that come back in a company’s identifiers.
| Identifier | Appears as | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Hong Kong Business Registration Number Hong Kong 8-character Business Registration Number (BRN) issued by the Inland Revenue Department. Distinct from the older Certificate of Incorporation (CI) number. | hk_brn | ^[A-Z0-9]{8}$ |
| CR Number | hk_cr_number | No fixed format |
| Masked Hong Kong Identity Card Number Hong Kong Identity Card number masked by the Companies Registry on a public report (Cap. 622N); captured exactly as the register prints it | hk_masked_hkid | No fixed format |
Identifier notes
- Hong Kong companies carry two distinct numbers that look similar but are not interchangeable: the Business Registration Number (BRN), which this API is keyed on, and the Certificate of Incorporation (CI) number, issued separately by a different authority. A CI number will not work where a BRN is expected.
- A director's or company secretary's Hong Kong ID card or passport number comes back exactly as the register prints it, and Hong Kong's register masks most of the digits itself — for example, a passport rendered as mostly asterisks with only a handful of digits visible. There is no clean, fully-visible format to expect: treat a masked value as correct, not as an error.
Documents you can order
| Document | Order by | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Hong Kong Annual Accounts Accounts / Financial Statements filed under form code AC with the Hong Kong Companies Registry, retrieved as the filed document image through the annual_accounts shortcut. | annual_accounts | Live |
| Hong Kong Articles of Association Articles of Association filed under form code ZAA with the Hong Kong Companies Registry, retrieved as the filed document image through the articles_of_association shortcut. | articles_of_association | Live |
| Hong Kong Company Particulars Report Current Company Particulars report from the Hong Kong Companies Registry — company status, share capital, directors, company secretary and members — exposed as the register_extract document shortcut and delivered as a PDF of the ordered report. | register_extract | Live |
| Hong Kong Filed Document An individual filed document for a Hong Kong company from the Companies Registry, retrieved as a document image by its Document Index reference number. Listing the company's Document Index is free; this document covers retrieval of one filing image. | A document ID from the list operation | Live |
Documents with a shortcut are ordered directly by that name — for example annual_accounts. The rest are filings whose availability differs per company: call list documents first and order the ID it returns.
Local notes
Gotchas
| Trap | What happens |
|---|---|
| Multi-currency capital is empty | If share capital is issued in more than one currency, the field returns empty rather than showing just one currency — not a sign the company has no capital. |
| Type from name pattern | Shareholders are classified as company or individual by name pattern-matching, not a register label, so unusual names can be misclassified. Corporate shareholders have no identifier, so you can't look them up as a company via this API. |
| Multi-class holdings lose the class | If a shareholder's holding spans more than one share class, the share class field comes back empty — reported only when all shares are in a single class. |
| No charges or mortgages | The document list excludes registered charges and mortgages — security interests over a company's assets won't appear there. |
| Chinese name fallback | A company's legal name comes back in Chinese when it has no registered English name — don't assume this field is always English. |
| Prefix search, 100 results | Company name search matches only a starts-with prefix — not substring or exact — and caps at 100 results with no pagination. Narrow the prefix for common names. |
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