Company searches, the PPSR, licence registers and credit scores each show something different. Knowing which record answers which question is most of the work.

One of the questions our community sent in after the Bathla administration was not about Bathla at all. A subcontractor already working for another large developer wanted to know what can actually be checked before signing on with anyone.

Insolvency practitioner Chris Baskerville answered it on the podcast with the list he works through before taking on any new counterparty. Most of it is public and most of it costs less than a tank of fuel. The more useful place to start is with what is not available at any price.

Most building companies never have to show anyone their accounts

Australia’s financial reporting rules turn on company size, not on industry or on how much money is moving through a business. That is why the accounts of a builder or developer are usually invisible right up until the point a developer goes under.

“A proprietary limited company does not need to report their financials to anybody, unless obviously you’re asked, usually when you’re seeking a loan from a bank.”

Under the Corporations Act, a proprietary company only crosses into public reporting when it becomes large, and ASIC applies a three part test to decide that. Companies that meet at least two of the three lodge an audited financial report and a directors report with ASIC every year, and those documents become public. Everything under the line keeps written records and, in most cases, shows them to nobody.

The practical effect is wide. A builder turning over $40 million with 80 staff sits below the threshold. So does a developer that holds each project in its own single purpose entity, which is ordinary practice rather than concealment. Structure alone can keep a very large operation out of the public accounts entirely.

When a company’s financials become public

A proprietary company is large, and must lodge audited financial reports with ASIC, if it meets at least two of three criteria at the end of a financial year: consolidated revenue of $50 million or more, consolidated gross assets of $25 million or more, or 100 or more employees. A company meeting fewer than two is small and generally lodges nothing, although ASIC notes small proprietary companies must lodge in some circumstances. The thresholds doubled for financial years commencing on or after 1 July 2019.

An ASIC search shows the structure and the people, and the history of both

ASIC Connect returns a free summary on any registered company, covering the name, ACN, status, registration date and registered office. The paid extracts are where the useful detail sits. A current company extract runs $9 and lists present directors, secretaries, share structure and shareholders. A current and historical extract at $18 adds former directors, previous addresses, past share structures and every status change since registration.

There is also a relational extract at $36, which sets out the roles and relationships attached to an entity. That is the register’s own version of the mapping exercise Baskerville described, and it works in both directions.

“You do a personal name search, and what it does, it tells you what entities are associated with that person.”

Separately, ASIC runs a published notices website carrying insolvency and deregistration notices lodged by registered liquidators. It holds notices published from 1 July 2012 and is free to search, which makes it the fastest way to establish whether an entity or a related one has been through an external administration before.

A PPSR search shows who already has a claim over the assets

An organisation grantor search on the Personal Property Securities Register costs $2, is run against an ACN or ABN, and returns every registered security interest over that entity’s personal property along with a search certificate. Baskerville treats a company search and a PPSR search as a single step at the start of any new engagement.

The search runs against the single identifier entered, and nothing else. An entity may hold both an ACN and an ABN, and an interest registered against one will not appear in a search of the other, which is why the register sets an order of precedence for which identifier to use.

What the register does not do is put a value on anything. It shows that interests exist and who holds them, not what they are worth or what is still owing. A long list of secured parties says something about how a business is funded. It does not say how much trouble it is in.

Individual searches on the PPSR work differently to company searches. They are only lawful where the searcher has an authorised purpose, such as dealing commercially with that person, and serious penalties apply where that test is not met.

Licence registers show conditions, and in NSW they show disciplinary history

Licensing is state based, so there is no national register. In New South Wales the public registers sit together at verify.licence.nsw.gov.au, covering contractors and tradespeople, design and building practitioners, owner builder permits and home building compensation cover.

The design and building practitioner register is required by section 98 of the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020, and publishes the practitioner’s name, place of business, registration number, class, current status, registration and expiry dates, any relevant disciplinary determination and the associated compliance history.

Baskerville’s point about these registers is narrower than it first sounds. Beyond looking for blemishes, the class of licence itself is worth reading, because it defines the work an entity is actually permitted to contract for.

Credit bureaus turn the same records into a score

The bureaus do not hold information the registers lack. What they do is connect it, apply a model to it, and return a number. Baskerville described the output in the terms most people will recognise from a credit file.

Reports of that kind now commonly carry an insolvency risk score and a relationship map showing which directors are tied to which entities and where addresses overlap. Some go further and attempt to predict the likelihood of an entity entering administration, which is the same modelling logic lenders have been applying as construction lending has tightened.

Sitting alongside them are court action monitoring services, which pull filings from the Federal Court and a range of state jurisdictions. Baskerville reads the pattern rather than the count. An entity that appears repeatedly as a defendant in claims for money owed reads differently to one that appears as a plaintiff chasing its own debtors.

Filings work as a leading indicator in a way a lodged insolvency notice does not, because by the time a notice appears the outcome has already happened. That is also the difference between checking one counterparty and reading the wider pattern of construction insolvencies.

“Remember, this is clues. This is not definitive.”

Two newer signals in NSW sit outside the credit system entirely

The first is iCIRT, the Equifax operated rating tool the NSW Government points to in its own material. It is voluntary, and only businesses that achieve three gold stars or higher and agree to publish appear on the register. Statuses shown include current rating, withdrawn, update pending and non-compliant, so a name disappearing is itself readable. Absence from a small voluntary register is not a finding, but a withdrawal is.

The second is newer. Reforms clarifying ten year decennial liability insurance received assent on 14 August 2026 and commenced on 20 August, five days before the Bathla administrators were appointed. The cover applies to residential strata buildings over three storeys, is taken out by the developer before an occupation certificate is issued, and attaches to the building rather than the developer, so it carries across to successive owners.

It is not compulsory. Building Commission NSW treats an acceptable policy as an alternative to a building bond under the Strata Building Bond and Inspections Scheme, currently set at 2 per cent of the project, and only one of the two is needed to obtain an occupation certificate. A planned increase to the bond, intended to push developers toward the insurance, has been deferred to 1 July 2028.

What makes it readable is the approval sitting on either side of it. A developer taking the insurance route must notify the Commission through the Planning Portal before construction starts, with a certificate of currency naming the insurer and the amount covered. The insurer in turn has to underwrite the developer first. The qualification is that the Commission currently lists a single approved policy from one provider, so a developer on the bond has not necessarily been refused anything. There is not yet much of a market to be refused by.

The same searches run in reverse

Every record described here can be searched against your own entity. A company extract, a PPSR search and a court filing check run on your own ACN return exactly what a client, a lender or an insurer sees before they make a decision about you.

What tends to surface is housekeeping rather than trouble. Discharged securities never removed from the register. A resolved filing still sitting on the record. An old trading name attached to a director. None of it can be corrected before somebody finds it.

What none of it shows

Every record described here is retrospective. A clean search result is a record of what has been detected, lodged and published, not a statement about what is happening inside a business this month. Baskerville was explicit that the exercise produces clues rather than conclusions.

The registers also say nothing about the terms of the engagement itself, which is where most of the recoverable risk actually sits, in the security, retention and payment provisions of how subcontract arrangements are set up.

And they say nothing at all about the searcher. Baskerville’s working rule is that any single customer supplying more than a quarter of revenue is a high risk position regardless of how that customer looks on paper. A perfect search result on a counterparty that represents half the order book is still a problem.

That is the part no register answers. The public record shows what a counterparty has done. How cash moves through a building business shows what it would cost to be wrong about them.

Frequently asked questions

RELATED ARTICLES

• How Builders Can Protect Themselves When a Developer Goes Under
• Private Credit Funds Have Restricted Redemptions Since Before Bathla’s Collapse, and Construction Lending Tightened With Them
• The Corporate Insolvency Inquiry Finally Has a Government Response
• Managing Subcontractors in Australia

Last updated 14 September 2026. ASIC and PPSR search fees are indexed and reviewed annually. Licensing registers are state based and the New South Wales registers are used here as the worked example. The decennial liability insurance position reflects reforms that commenced on 20 August 2026.

General information only. This article describes publicly available records and commentary made on The Good Builder Podcast. It does not take into account the circumstances of any particular business and is not legal, financial or insolvency advice. A search result is not a substitute for professional advice on a specific counterparty or contract.

Author: TGB Editorial