Polish companies API: Meet Business Registers of Poland
All about Polish companies information: main business registers in Poland, the National Court Register KRS and CEIDG database, financial statements of Polish companies, and other usefull registries. In this article we also write about exactly how many businesses there are in Poland now.
As a company data provider based in Poland, we can say without false modesty that we know practically everything about the Polish economic information market. For years, we have been creating Poland Company Information APIs that provide financial institutions and enterprises with registration data and financial statements from main Polish commercial registers, such as the National Court Register, Central Registration and Information on Business or CRBR.
In this article, we will tell you what information about legal entities can be found in each of them, in which to verify the contractor if it is a limited liability company, and in which to look for data on sole proprietorships, VAT payers or Polish UBO.
If you are interested in the topic of business registers in Europe and available business data, see also our previous articles on information on business in Slovakia and Czech Republic.
Information on business in Poland — TOP Business Registers
Basically, there are two main commercial registers in Poland:
- the National Court Register (in polish Krajowy Rejestr Sądowy, popularly called with its abbreviation KRS)
- the Central Registration and Information on Business (in polish Centralna Ewidencja i Informacja o Działalności Gospodarczej, popularly called with its abbreviation CEIDG).
In the first business register, KRS, registered are all Polish legal entities except for one, i.e. sole proprietorship, information about which must be sought in CEIDG.
In addition to these two commercial registers, there are also other government databases in Poland that provide information about business. The most useful in risk management processes are:
- REGON — maintained by the Central Statistical Office of Poland
- MSiG — the Court and Commercial Gazette
- Wykaz Podatników VAT (known also as Biała Lista) — the database of VAT Taxpayers
- CRBR — Polish ultimate beneficial owners register.
We describe each of the registers in more detail in the following paragraphs.
KRS — the National Court Register of Poland
Polish National Court Register has been operating since 2001 and is administered by the Ministry of Justice of Poland. It is an open and public source of data that allows you to freely search for economic entities by their registration numbers, viewing information corresponding to current and full excerpts from the National Court Register, as well as downloading financial statements of Polish companies.
Unfortunately, at the moment KRS does not have an English language version.
As we mentioned in the previous paragraph, all Polish legal entities except sole proprietorships are registered in this commercial register. This means that in the KRS database you will find information about:
- limited liability companies (pol. spółki z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością, abbreviation — sp. z o.o.)
- joint-stock companies (pol. spółki akcyjne, abbreviation — S.A.)
- simple joint-stock companies (pol. proste spółki akcyjne, abbreviation — P. S.A.)
- general partnerships (pol. spółki jawne, abbreviation — sp.j.)
- partnership companies (pol. spółki partnerskie, abbreviation — sp.p.)
- limited partnerships (pol. spółki komandytowe, abbreviation —sp.k.)
- limited joint-stock partnerships (pol. spółki komandytowo-akcyjne, abbreviation- S.K.A.)
- European companies (pol. spółki europejskie)
- cooperatives (pol. spółdzielnie)
- European cooperatives (pol. spółdzielnie europejskie)
- European economic interest groupings (pol. europejskie zgrupowania interesów gospodarczych)
- state-owned enterprises (pol. przedsiębiorstwa państwowe)
- research institutes (pol. instytuty badawcze)
- foreign companies (pol. przedsiębiorstwa zagraniczne)
- mutual insurance companies (pol. towarzystwa ubezpieczeń wzajemnych)
- mutual reinsurance companies (pol. towarzystwa reasekuracji wzajemnej)
- branches of foreign entrepreneurs operating in the territory of Poland (pol. oddziały przedsiębiorców zagranicznych działających na terytorium Polski)
- main branches of foreign insurance companies (pol. główne oddziały zagranicznych zakładów ubezpieczeń)
- main branches of foreign reinsurance companies (pol. główne oddziały zagranicznych zakładów reasekuracji)
- budgetary economy institutions (pol. instytucje gospodarki budżetowej)
- foundations (pol. fundacje)
- associations (pol. stowarzyszenia).
How many companies are in Poland? Total number, 2020
Currently, as of December 8, 2020, there are over 632,3 thousand active Polish business entities in the National Court Register. If we want to count also those with inactive business status, altogether in KRS there are 824.7 legal entities.
Number of Polish companies in 2020 listed by their legal forms:
- 407,2 thousand of limited liability companies
- 39,9 thousand of limited partnerships
- 30,6 thousand of general partnerships
- 8,4 thousand of joint-stock companies
- 2,3 thousand of partnership companies
- 2,9 thousand of limited joint-stock partnerships.
Contrary to appearances, none of the above types of companies is the most popular legal form of business in Poland. Polish entrepreneurs most often decide to set up sole proprietorships — there are almost 2.5 million of them. Information about them can be found in another business register, CEIDG.
Polish company search: information from KRS
In Poland, the registration number of a business entity, it is called the KRS number (pol. Numer KRS) and this is the identification number most useful in a Polish company search. By entering it in the KRS search engine or the database of financial statements, we can easily verify a specific contractor.
KRS search engine (pol. Wyszukiwarka KRS) allows us to download current and full extracts from the commercial register of Poland. Note that the current excerpt from the National Court Register (pol. Aktualny odpis KRS) is generally understood as current information about the company and its management board. The full excerpt from the National Court Register (pol. Pełen odpis KRS), contains both current and historical company registration data — previous changes in the management board, share capital of the company, etc.
The extracts from the National Court Register provide the following data on Polish companies:
- company name
- KRS number ( registration number in Poland)
- NIP number (tax identification number in Poland)
- REGON number (company identification number given by the National Journal of the National Economy Register, REGON database, maintained by the Central Statistical Office of Poland, GUS)
- company business status (whether the company is active or not)
- legal form
- name of the court where company was registered
- incorporation date
- PKD (Polish code for main business activity, which can be compared to the SIC/NACE codes popular in other countries)
- head office address
- company capital amount registered and paid up
- information about stocks
- company dissolution date
- company liquidation/bankruptcy status
- the manner of representing the economic entity and the name of the representing body
- name of the supervisory authority
- information about bankruptcy
- website of the company
- phone & email address
- information on companies and people related to the economic entity (management board member or owner, business relation type, the name of the related entity which has shares and stocks in Polish company etc.)
- information about debts.
Moreover, the KRS website also offers a viewer of financial documents of companies registered in Poland. Although the electronic database of financial statements was launched only in 2019, which means that you will find mainly financial statements of Polish companies for 2018 and 2019, not older ones, but all of them are available in a digitized XML form. They are free to download.
Polish Business Register of sole proprietorships: CEIDG
The second most important business register in Poland is CEIDG which is supervised by the Ministry of Development, Labor and Technology. All sole proprietorships established in Poland are registered in this nationwide database, and there is, as we have already written, 2.5 million of them. Not so little.
The CEIDG business register has an English language version and you do not need to know Polish to verify a Polish individual entrepreneur there. Polish sole proprietorships are not granted KRS registration numbers, therefore a specific entrepreneur should be searched for in the database using his unique NIP or REGON number.
The business information provided by the register website is very similar to those found in the National Court Register, but in a limited form, because with this type of legal form there is no information about the court, board members, shares or stocks.
Other Polish Business Registers
If you cooperate with Polish companies and need to learn more about them than just basic registration data, you may be interested in a few more open company registers:
- REGON — this database of the Central Statistical Office of Poland provides full information on the codes of business classification of business activities (PKD, what is SIC/NACE equivalent) and provides the list of branches of a given company
- MSiG — the Court and Commercial Gazette, №1 source of data on companies, primarily for lawyers. It is here that information about bankruptcy, court notices and summons are published
- Wykaz Podatników VAT (known also as Biała Lista) — If you have a company operating in Poland, you simply need to know about this VATpayers business register, because if a company is not registered in it or you have exchanged invoices with it, but to a company bank account other than the one on the list of Polish TAX payers, you will lose the option to write off the TAX from B2B transactions. We once devoted a whole separate article to this database, which you can read HERE
- CRBR — Polish ultimate beneficial owners register, a mandatory company data source for AML / compliance departments. Theoretically, it should contain all Polish UBOs, but due to the fact that registration was mandatory for companies until July 13, 2020, it may still turn out that it lacks information about some Polish commercial companies. We wrote more about CRBR HERE.
Polish companies API
As a RegTech expert based in Poland, we specialize in providing economic information via API directly to the internal systems of various companies.
On our website you can find a full list of available Polish companies APIs, which, depending on your current business needs, can provide you with data from the following registers: KRS, CEIDG, REGON, MSiG, CRBR, Polish TAXpayers register.
In addition, among the Polish companies APIs we have created, you will also find an API with financial reports, consumer bankruptcy, business reports and risk assessment reports, and Polish PEP.
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