New: financial analysis of Belgian companies via NBB annual accounts

In brief

The Company Belgium API now offers multi-year financial analysis of Belgian companies via the official annual accounts filed with the NBB Central Balance Sheet Office. A single call retrieves up to 10 fiscal years of history with solvency, debt-to-equity, net margin and ROE ratios already computed.

A new dimension for your company data

Until now, the Company Belgium API let you retrieve the identity of a Belgian company: BCE number, name, address, NACE activities, establishments, status. Today we add a long-awaited building block: financial analysis based on the official annual accounts filed with the Central Balance Sheet Office (CBSO) of the National Bank of Belgium (NBB). As a reminder, the BCE Company Belgium API already covers identity data for over 1.9 million enterprises.

With this new feature, a single API call gives you several years of financial history for any company subject to the filing obligation.

Where does the data come from?

All Belgian companies must file their annual accounts with the NBB's Central Balance Sheet Office (CBSO). These accounts are public and constitute the official source of financial information about companies in Belgium.

We query the official CBSO API directly to retrieve, for each filing:

• The structured XBRL JSON when the format is available (for recent filings)

• The original PDF for older filings, with automatic extraction of the key rubrics where possible

Only deposits of type Initial are processed (corrections are ignored), and we keep a single filing per fiscal year to avoid duplicates.

The new endpoint

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GET /api/companies/{enterpriseNumber}/financials?years=5

Example:

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GET /api/companies/0403170701/financials?years=5

The years parameter lets you request between 1 and 10 fiscal years (5 by default). The response returns the history sorted from the most recent to the oldest year.

Rubrics extracted

For each available fiscal year, the API returns the standard rubrics from the Belgian accounting schema:

Automatically computed ratios

In addition to the raw rubrics, the API computes four key financial ratios for each year:

• Solvency ratio = Equity / Total assets

• Debt-to-equity ratio = Debts / Equity

• Net margin = Profit or loss / Turnover

• Return on equity (ROE) = Profit or loss / Equity

No more parsing balance sheets yourself: you get the indicators your risk, credit or sales teams actually work with.

Example response

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{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "enterpriseNumber": "0403170701",
    "enterpriseName": "EXAMPLE COMPANY SA",
    "currency": "EUR",
    "yearsRequested": 5,
    "yearsAvailable": 5,
    "yearsWithXbrl": 4,
    "data": [
      {
        "year": 2024,
        "source": "xbrl",
        "turnover": 12500000,
        "profitLoss": 820000,
        "equity": 4200000,
        "totalAssets": 9800000,
        "debts": 5600000,
        "employees": 42
      }
    ],
    "ratios": [
      {
        "year": 2024,
        "solvencyRatio": 42.86,
        "debtToEquityRatio": 1.33,
        "netMarginRatio": 6.56,
        "returnOnEquityRatio": 19.52
      }
    ],
    "pdfOnlyDeposits": []
  }
}

The pdfOnlyDeposits field lists fiscal years for which only a PDF is available: you can then download the original document via /api/companies/{enterpriseNumber}/financials/pdf/{reference}.

Ready-to-use PDF report

When you need a presentable deliverable (client file, credit committee, due diligence), the API can also generate a full financial PDF report with evolution charts, ratios and automatic commentary:

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GET /api/companies/{enterpriseNumber}/financials/report

Performance and caching

Loading five years of accounts for one company requires multiple calls to the CBSO. To keep response times reasonable:

• Filings are loaded in parallel, in batches of 4, respecting the NBB rate limits

• Each analysis is cached server-side; subsequent requests are near-instant

• Transient NBB errors (missing format, timeouts) are handled without breaking the overall analysis

Use cases

• Credit scoring and credit insurance: automate supplier or customer risk assessment

• KYC / enhanced due diligence: enrich your AML files with financial indicators — for the legal obligations, see our guide on automated KYC verification via API

• CRM and sales tools: qualify prospects by size, profitability, solvency

• Accounting and audit: quickly review a counterparty's accounts without opening the NBB site

• Research and statistics: aggregate sector indicators on the Belgian economic fabric

How to access it

The endpoint is available today for all accounts with an active API key. No additional configuration is required: you use the same X-API-Key and X-API-Secret headers as for the rest of the API.

To get started, check the API documentation or try the endpoint directly from your dashboard.

What's next?

This first version focuses on standard rubrics and the most commonly used ratios. We are already working on:

• Automatic sector benchmarking (NACE percentiles) — in the meantime, learn how NACE codes work in Belgium

• Alerts on significant year-over-year variations — combinable with BCE monitoring for company movements

• CSV / Excel export of financial time series

• A search-by-financial-criteria endpoint (turnover, workforce, profitability)

As always, your feedback helps us prioritize. Feel free to reach out from your support area.