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Guide · Netherlands · CIR

What is the Centraal Insolventieregister?

The Netherlands keeps one central register of insolvency proceedings and clears each case out six months after it ends. Here is what it publishes, what identifies a business in it, and what that removal rule means for anyone relying on it.

In het Nederlands

The short version

The Centraal Insolventieregister (CIR) is the central, public register of insolvency proceedings in the Netherlands, maintained by the Raad voor de rechtspraak, the council of the judiciary, and published at insolventies.rechtspraak.nl. Every district court (rechtbank) feeds its insolvency decisions into it, so one search covers the whole country.

It publishes three kinds of proceeding: faillissement, the bankruptcy of a company or a person; surseance van betaling, a court-granted suspension of payments meant to let a business reach a composition with its creditors; and the WSNP statutory debt-restructuring scheme, which applies to natural persons. Companies and private individuals sit in the same register. A business is identified by its KVK number, the eight-digit number from the Handelsregister of the Kamer van Koophandel, and that number is the key you want.

What a case carries

A CIR case is not a single notice but a dossier with a dated publication history. It carries:

FieldWhat it is
RechtbankThe district court handling the case, such as Rechtbank Amsterdam or Rechtbank Limburg.
InsolventienummerThe case number, which stays with the case through every publication.
DebtorStatutory name, trade names, addresses, and for a business the KVK number.
Curator or bewindvoerderThe trustee appointed to a bankruptcy, or the administrator in a suspension of payments or WSNP.
Rechter-commissarisThe supervising judge. Replacements are published as events in their own right.
PublicationsThe opening judgment, every later decision, verification meetings, a homologated composition, and the closure, each with its date.

The publication history is the part worth reading. A case that shows an opening, a change of curator and a verification meeting is a bankruptcy being worked through; one that ends in opheffing wegens gebrek aan baten was lifted because there was nothing to distribute; one that ends in homologatie reached a composition the court confirmed.

A live register, not an archive

The rule that defines the CIR is removal: a case is taken out of the register six months after the proceeding ends. The register shows what is open now and what closed recently. It will not tell you that a company went bankrupt in 2019, and a search that returns nothing says nothing about the past. The same rule binds anyone who mirrors the register, so a serious replica deletes on the same schedule rather than accumulating a history the source itself is not allowed to keep.

That makes the CIR different from a gazette. BODACC in France and the German insolvency portal are publication records; the Dutch register is a current-state view with an expiry on every case. If your process needs to know whether a Dutch counterparty has ever been insolvent, the CIR cannot answer that question for anything older than six months after closure, and neither can anything built on it.

The register without a register

The Netherlands has no open company register to pair the CIR with. The KVK Handelsregister is a paid service whose terms restrict bulk access and onward delivery, so Dutch company profiles, directors and filings are not something an open data API can carry. The insolvency register, by contrast, is published by the judiciary for exactly this purpose, with a documented webservice for replicas and terms that permit passing the data on. That asymmetry is why Dutch coverage in an API tends to start with insolvency, and why the KVK number on a case matters so much: it is the one stable identifier that will match whatever company record you hold elsewhere. Prometiam also serves the Dutch legal entities that hold a Legal Entity Identifier and whose KVK number GLEIF records (from the GLEIF golden copy, not the Handelsregister), and a notice links to such a record by KVK number; most Dutch notices still link to no company record.

Querying Dutch insolvencies from an API

Prometiam serves Dutch corporate insolvency cases from the CIR through the same endpoint as France, Germany, the UK, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, the US, Denmark, Croatia, Sweden, Spain, Latvia and Estonia.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer rk_live_..." \
  "https://api.prometiam.com/functions/v1/risk-api/insolvency/search?country=NL&company_number=33120758"

Every record carries the KVK number, the court, the publication date, the publication text and a link to the case, with a normalised event_type: insolvency for a bankruptcy and restructuring for a suspension of payments. Look a counterparty up by company_number, or filter by event_type, date_from and date_to.

Being straight about the limits: legal entities only, so no WSNP cases and no private bankruptcies, and no personal data of any kind; the curator's contact details are never served. Coverage mirrors the register's six-month removal, so it is a live picture of open and recently closed proceedings, not a historical archive, and the count does not grow the way a gazette's does. Notices are not linked to company records, because no Dutch company register is held. If you need Dutch company profiles, this is not the tool.

FAQ

What is the insolventieregister?
The insolventieregister, formally the Centraal Insolventieregister (CIR), is the public register of insolvency proceedings in the Netherlands, maintained by the Raad voor de rechtspraak: faillissement (bankruptcy), surseance van betaling (moratorium) and WSNP (debt restructuring for individuals). Each case is removed six months after it ends.

Is the CIR the same as the KVK Handelsregister?
No. The Handelsregister is the company register, run by the Kamer van Koophandel on paid terms. The CIR is the judiciary's insolvency register and refers to a business by its KVK number.

Why has a Dutch bankruptcy disappeared?
Cases are removed six months after the proceeding ends. Nothing built on the register may keep them longer.

Is surseance van betaling an insolvency?
It is a moratorium, granted by the court to let a business reach a composition. It is published in the same register and reported as a restructuring event, not a bankruptcy.

Are private individuals in the CIR?
Yes: private bankruptcies and WSNP debt restructuring are published alongside company cases. Prometiam serves legal entities only.

Does Prometiam hold Dutch company data?
No. Dutch coverage is corporate insolvency cases only, not linked to company records.