British Virgin Islands

Country-specific identifiers, data sources, and implementation details

Start here

This guide contains public integration notes for British Virgin Islands. Use it for identifier formats, search behavior, and country-specific caveats. The live source of truth for coverage, pricing, data sources, documents, legal forms, roles, and status values is the pricing page.

British Virgin Islands coverage, pricing, and sources

Open the current catalog for supported datapoints, documents, sources, identifiers, and availability.

Country details below are preserved as integration notes. If a table or example conflicts with the live pricing page, use the pricing page as the source of truth and contact support.

Current limitation (April 2026)

Document-based verification is temporarily deactivated for the British Virgin Islands. The BVI FSC register document service has been broken on their side since March 2026 (returns HTTP 400 for every document retrieve request), and their fees are very high even when the gateway works.

Only the public search API is exposed today, which means you can retrieve basic company data (name, status, legal form category, company number, previous names) in onboarding mode but not directors, shareholders, registered address, or capital. We will reactivate the full verification flow once the FSC restores document retrieve.

Data Sources

BVI company data comes from the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission (FSC), the autonomous regulatory authority that operates the Registry of Corporate Affairs.

• BVI FSC Public Search API (publicsearch.bvifsc.vg). Free REST API providing basic company information: legal name, company number, entity type, status, and previous names. No authentication required. This is currently the only active source for BVI data and powers the onboarding profile.

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

BVI company numbers do not have a check digit or internal structure. The FSC has assigned identifiers across several historical registers, which is why two different formats coexist today.

Format	Regex	Example	Applies To
Pure numeric	^\d+$	18412, 1378562	BVI Business Companies (type 1), International Business Companies (type 5)
Letter-prefixed	^[A-Z]\d+$	L658, L732, L7805	Local Companies (type 7), pre-existing under the old Companies Act

Both formats are validated before we hit the register. There is no check digit, no embedded year, no structural meaning beyond the optional letter prefix indicating a legacy Local Company.

Identifiers in API Response

Identifier Type	Format	Example	Notes
companyNumber	Numeric or letter-prefixed	1378562 or L658	Official registration number assigned by the BVI FSC

BVI companies do not have VAT numbers, tax IDs, or other secondary identifiers in the public registry. The company number is the sole identifier.

Search Capabilities

Search Type	Pattern	Example	Match Type
By company number (numeric)	Digits only	18412	Exact
By company number (prefixed)	Letter + digits	L658	Exact
By name	Text string (min 2 chars)	"BANKIM"	Fuzzy

Both name and ID searches query the BVI FSC public search API in real time. There is no deduplicated index for BVI.

Company Status

The BVI FSC returns a free-text status string. We map known values deterministically and fall back to keyword inference for unrecognized values.

Local Status	Standardized	Active
Active	Active	Yes
In Good Standing	Active	Yes
In Penalty - Non filing of Beneficial Ownership	Inactive	No
In Liquidation (insolvent)	Under Insolvency Proceeding	No
In Liquidation (solvent)	In Liquidation	No
Dissolved	Closed	No
Dissolved (10 year non-pmt)	Closed	No
Dissolved (7 year non-pmt)	Closed	No
Struck off - Dissolved	Closed	No
Struck off - Non Pmt A/Fee	Closed	No

Legal Forms

The public search API returns a coarse numeric type code indicating one of 5 broad categories. Detailed BVI Business Companies Act 2004 subtypes (Company Limited by Shares, Company Limited by Guarantee, Unlimited Company, Restricted Purpose Company, Segregated Portfolio Company) only appear in the trade register extract document, which is not reachable today.

Type Code	Local Name	Standardized	Notes
1	BVI Business Company	LimitedLiabilityCompany	Most common, incorporated under BCA 2004
3	Limited Partnership	Partnership	Limited and general partners
4	Foreign Company	Other	Foreign entity registered in BVI
5	International Business Company	LimitedLiabilityCompany	Legacy type, pre-BCA 2004, grandfathered
7	Local Company	LimitedLiabilityCompany	Incorporated under the old Companies Act, uses letter-prefixed numbers

Quirks & Gotchas

Quirk	Details
Document retrieve deactivated	The BVI FSC register document service is broken on their side. retrieval/to-web-checkout returns HTTP 400 for every request. We deactivated the document-based verification flow in March 2026 and will reactivate it once the FSC restores retrieval.
High document fees	Even when the gateway works, BVI document fees are among the highest of any jurisdiction we cover.
Residential proxy required	Datacenter IPs are blocked by the BVI FSC public search endpoint. All requests are routed through a residential proxy.
Privacy jurisdiction	BVI is a well-known privacy jurisdiction. Even when documents are accessible, directors and shareholders visible on them are frequently nominees rather than beneficial owners.
No UBO register	BVI does not have a public UBO register. Beneficial ownership data sits in the BOSS (Beneficial Ownership Secure Search) system, which is restricted to competent authorities.
No registration date in search	The public search API does not expose incorporation or registration dates. These only appear in the trade register extract document (currently unreachable).
No address in search	Registered addresses are not available in the public search API.
Coarse legal form	The type field gives only a broad category. Detailed BCA 2004 subtypes are not exposed by the search API.
No activity codes	BVI has no national industry classification system in its registry. Many holding companies and SPVs have no stated business description.

Data Availability

Data Type	Onboarding Profile	Verification Mode	Notes
Company Name	Available	Not available
Company Number	Available	Not available
Company Status	Available	Not available	Mapped from FSC free-text status
Legal Form (coarse)	Available	Not available	One of 5 type codes
Previous Company Names	Available	Not available
Registration Date	Not available	Not available	Would come from document
Legal Address	Not available	Not available	Would come from document
Share Capital	Not available	Not available	Would come from document
Legal Representatives	Not available	Not available	Would come from document
Shareholders	Not available	Not available	Would come from document
Ultimate Beneficial Owners	Not available	Not available	BVI has no public UBO register
Activity Codes	Not available	Not available	BVI has no classification system

Verification mode is listed as unavailable because document retrieve is deactivated. We will update this table as soon as the FSC register document service is fixed.

Example API Response

Query: POST /v2/company with { "id": "1987245", "countryCode": "VG", "mode": "onboarding", "dataPoints": ["company"] }

{
  "company": {
    "id": "1987245",
    "countryCode": "VG",
    "identifiers": {
      "companyNumber": "1987245"
    },
    "legalName": "PACIFIC VENTURES INC.",
    "status": {
      "localName": "Active",
      "active": true,
      "statusDetails": {
        "status": "ACTIVE"
      }
    },
    "legalForm": {
      "localName": "BVI Business Company",
      "englishTranslation": "BVI Business Company",
      "standardized": "LimitedLiabilityCompany"
    }
  }
}

This is the complete shape of the onboarding response. No address, no directors, no shareholders, no registration date, no capital. The response is instant (single HTTP call to the BVI FSC public search API via a residential proxy) and requires no document retrieve.