The Open Database Of The Corporate World

Central Business Names Index

Jurisdiction
Switzerland
Website
http://www.zefix.admin.ch/
Identifier Notes

Switzerland has a federated Company registration system. Companies are registered in one of the 26 cantonal registers, and their data is then passed onto the central Federal Central Business Names Index, also known as Zefix.

The main company identifier we are using is the Zefix "EHRA ID" (English: Federal Commercial Registry Office Identifier or "FCRO ID"). This is the primary key used by Zefix to uniquely identify a company in their index. It predates newer IDs such as the Federal Identification Numbers assigned by Cantonal Registers since January 2000 or the Statistical Office-allocated federal Enterprise Identification Numbers allocated since 2011. This allow us to capture a wider variety of older, inactive companies than just those with the most recent identification system. We do store these additional identifiers, and they are shown on the company page, and via the API.

About Swiss Federal Statistical Office Enterprise Identification Number

  • Format: CHE-XXX.XXX.XXX
  • Since January 2011, all companies, foreign branches and associations / foundations registered in the various Swiss Commerce Registries are assigned a unique federal Company Identification Number, locally known as IDE (French), UID (German), IDI (Italian).
  • More information on these numbers can be found here

About Cantonal Register allocated Federal Identification Numbers

  • Format: CH-RRR.X.XXX.XXX-P, where RRR is the canton number, X.XXX.XXX is the company number, and P is a check-digit
  • This number was allocated to active companies as-at January 2000 and thereafter, and those that became inactive after that date.

Basel Anti-Money Laundering Score
4.74 (from 0 to 10 – lower is better)

Scores from Open Company Data Index

Metric Score Max Points
Freely Searchable 20 20
Licensing 0 30
Data Freely Available 0 20
Directors 5 10
Accounts 0 10
Shareholders 0 10
Total 25 100