SHAB — Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt, in English the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SOGC), in French the Feuille officielle suisse du commerce (FOSC) — is Switzerland's official publication of record for all commercial register events. Published five times weekly by SECO, it carries legal force from the moment of publication. For Swiss IAMs and compliance professionals, SHAB is the primary mechanism for detecting corporate changes that may require a KYC file update.
What SHAB publishes
SHAB covers every registered change to every Swiss legal entity:
- New incorporations — a company coming into existence
- Director and signatory changes — appointments, resignations, authority changes
- Address mutations — registered office changes
- Capital changes — share capital increases, reductions, or conversion
- Purpose amendments — changes to the company's registered business purpose
- Name changes — company renames and brand changes
- Mergers and demergers — structural corporate changes
- Voluntary liquidations and dissolutions
- Bankruptcy declarations and debt enforcement proceedings
- Public calls to creditors
Between 1,200 and 1,500 individual publications appear daily. Every Swiss company with any change in registered status generates at least one SHAB publication.
The legal effect of a SHAB publication
This is the key distinction between SHAB and other data sources.
A Zefix extract is informational. A SHAB publication is legally binding.
Under OR Art. 932, the legal publicity principle (Publizitätswirkung) means that once a fact is published in SHAB, it is deemed known to all third parties — including those who have not actually read the publication. About 90% of SHAB announcements have immediate legal effects from the publication date.
This matters for compliance in a specific way: an IAM that fails to detect a material SHAB publication about a client cannot claim ignorance. The fact is legally published and deemed known. This is why SHAB monitoring is not just a best practice — it is an operational necessity for firms with ongoing client monitoring obligations under AMLA.
SHAB vs Zefix: two different questions
Zefix and SHAB answer different questions:
| Question | Source |
|---|---|
| What is the current registered state of this company? | Zefix |
| What has changed at this company, and when? | SHAB |
| Is this director still authorised? | Zefix |
| When was this director appointed? | SHAB |
| Has this company ever been in bankruptcy? | SHAB archives |
For initial entity verification (AMLA Art. 3), use Zefix. For ongoing monitoring and detecting changes over time, SHAB is the correct source.
SHAB archives
Digital SHAB archives are available from 2003 on shab.ch, searchable by company name, publication date, and publication type. Digitised editions from 1883 onward are available on E-Periodica, providing full-text search across 140 years of Swiss commercial history.
For most KYC and due diligence purposes, the 2003 digital archive covers the relevant period. When conducting enhanced due diligence on a complex or high-risk entity, reviewing the full SHAB history since 2003 reveals patterns — repeated director turnover, frequent address changes, prior bankruptcy proceedings — that may not be visible in the current Zefix snapshot.
How SHAB monitoring works for KYC
For Swiss IAMs with a portfolio of corporate clients, SHAB monitoring means watching for publications that affect any client entity. The operationally reliable method is UID-based monitoring.
Every Swiss company has a UID (Unternehmens-Identifikationsnummer, formatted as CHE-XXX.XXX.XXX). SHAB publications are indexed by UID, making it possible to programmatically query for all publications affecting a specific entity. This is accessible via:
- The LINDAS SPARQL endpoint at lindas.admin.ch/query — free, structured, queryable by UID
- The Zefix REST API — exposes SHAB publication history per entity by UID
- Commercial compliance tools including Suiva — which monitors the full client portfolio and generates compliance-relevant alerts on publication matches
Which SHAB events trigger compliance action?
Not every SHAB publication requires immediate action. The events most relevant to ongoing KYC obligations are:
Director or signatory changes — A new director may be a beneficial owner not previously identified, or may introduce a PEP previously absent from the file. The Form A should be reviewed. Fresh sanctions and PEP screening should be run on the newly added person.
Address changes — An address change to a known fiduciary or domiciliation address warrants reassessment of the entity's operational substance and a review of the existing Form A plausibility check.
Entry into liquidation or bankruptcy — Immediate risk escalation. The client relationship may need to be reassessed or terminated.
Capital changes — For GmbH clients where quota holder data is visible in SHAB mutations, a capital change may indicate a change in beneficial ownership that the Form A has not yet captured.
Purpose amendments — A material change in business scope may affect the consistency of the KYC file with the mandate.
SHAB monitoring as a periodic review trigger
AMLO-FINMA requires periodic re-review of client files, but the interval between reviews — annually for high-risk, every three to five years for standard-risk — can be long. SHAB monitoring fills the gap: it provides continuous, event-driven detection of changes between scheduled review cycles.
The FATF-aligned pKYC (perpetual KYC) model increasingly replaces calendar-based periodic reviews with event-driven monitoring. For Swiss corporate clients, SHAB-based monitoring is the practical implementation of this model.
Key terms
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| SHAB / SOGC / FOSC | Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce — legally binding publication of all commercial register changes |
| UID | Unternehmens-Identifikationsnummer — unique Swiss company identifier (CHE-XXX.XXX.XXX) |
| Zefix | Federal portal for searching Swiss commercial register data |
| LINDAS | Swiss federal linked data platform — SPARQL access to Zefix and SHAB |
| pKYC | Perpetual KYC — continuous, event-driven monitoring model |
| OR Art. 932 | Swiss Code of Obligations — establishes legal publicity principle |