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Every country has its own way of describing companies. A “limited liability company” is a “GmbH” in Germany, an “SARL” in France, and an “S.r.l.” in Italy. Activity codes vary from NACE (EU) to SIC (UK) to ISIC (Global). Topograph standardizes this data so you can build one integration that works everywhere. This standardization is crucial because it enables you to:
  • Build consistent logic across countries without country-specific conditionals
  • Compare companies from different jurisdictions using the same classification systems
  • Integrate with downstream systems that expect standardized formats
  • Reduce complexity in your codebase by handling variations at the API level
Important Exception: The Onboarding Endpoint skips some standardization steps (like legal form ISO codes, role ISO codes, and status normalization) to maximize speed. However, activity normalization is included — you’ll get ISIC and NACE codes for industry classification. Use the verification data endpoint if you need fully standardized data.
Understanding a company’s legal structure is fundamental to risk assessment, compliance, and business relationships. Different legal forms carry different liability implications, regulatory requirements, and governance structures. However, each country uses its own terminology and classification system, making cross-border comparisons difficult. We map thousands of local legal forms to both a standardized English translation and an ISO 20275 code. The ISO 20275 standard (Entity Legal Forms) provides a globally recognized classification system maintained by GLEIF (Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation). This enables precise identification and comparison of legal entity types across jurisdictions. How we do it: We use AI-powered translation and semantic matching against the official ISO 20275 code list, which contains over 3,400 entity legal forms across 185+ jurisdictions. When available, we also perform vector similarity search against the GLEIF-maintained database to find the most accurate ISO code match. Example: Germany
  • Local: “Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung”
  • ISO 20275: 54RD
  • Standardized: Limited Liability Company
The ISO 20275 standard is maintained by GLEIF and provides a comprehensive, internationally recognized classification system. Learn more about ISO 20275 Entity Legal Forms Code List.

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2. Roles

Identifying who has legal authority to represent a company is critical for due diligence, contract execution, and compliance checks. However, role titles vary dramatically across languages and legal systems—what’s called a “Manager” in one country might be a “Gérant” in France or a “Geschäftsführer” in Germany, each with subtly different legal powers. We map these diverse role titles to a standardized English classification and, for legal representatives, assign an ISO 5009 code. ISO 5009 (Official Organizational Roles) provides a standardized way to identify organizational roles within legal entities, enabling consistent role-based analysis across jurisdictions. How we do it: We use AI to translate role titles to English and classify them into standardized categories. For legal representatives, we perform semantic matching against the ISO 5009 code list, which is contextually aware of both the role title and the company’s legal form (ISO 20275 code), ensuring accurate role classification.
Local TitleCountryStandardized RoleISO 5009 Code
GérantFranceManagerDAGL
GeschäftsführerGermanyManaging DirectorDAGL
Amministratore UnicoItalySole DirectorDAGL
ISO 5009 codes provide standardized role identification within legal entities. The standard is maintained by GLEIF and enables consistent role-based analysis. Learn more about ISO 5009 Official Organizational Roles Code List.

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3. Activity Codes (Activity Mapping)

Economic activity classification is essential for industry analysis, market research, regulatory compliance, and risk assessment. However, countries use different classification systems—Italy uses ATECO, the UK uses SIC, Germany uses WZ codes, and France uses NAF/APE codes. Even within the EU, while NACE is the standard, local implementations vary. We map these diverse local activity codes to international standards: ISIC Rev.4 (the global standard) and NACE Rev.2.1 (the European standard). This enables you to compare companies across borders, perform industry-level analysis, and integrate with systems that expect standardized activity codes.

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Mapping Process

Topograph uses AI to standardize the activity sector of companies through a two-step process, prioritizing precision over recall.

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Step 1: Local Classifications → ISIC Rev.4

We use AI to map local activity codes to ISIC Rev.4. Priority order:
  1. Local Classification Codes (Primary source)
    • Country-specific codes (e.g., ATECO for Italy)
    • Sector-specific codes (e.g., SIC, RAE, SAE)
    • Official business register classifications
  2. Activity Descriptions (Fallback source)
    • Free-text activity descriptions when no local codes are available
Process: AI analyzes the activity code and description together to find the most semantically similar ISIC code. We favour accurate matches over complete coverage.

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Step 2: ISIC Rev.4 → NACE Rev.2.1

Formal mapping from ISIC to NACE using a comprehensive mapping table.
  • 766 ISIC codes mapped to corresponding NACE codes
  • 100% coverage of ISIC Rev.4 classification
  • AI-generated mappings with very high confidence scores

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Example: Italy

{
  "input": {
    "classification": "ATECO2025",
    "code": "01.11",
    "description": "Coltivazione di cereali (escluso il riso)"
  },
  "step1_result": {
    "code": "0111",
    "description": "Growing of cereals (except rice)..."
  },
  "step2_result": {
    "code": "01.11",
    "description": "NACE 01.11 - AI mapped from ISIC 0111"
  }
}

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API Response

{
  "activities": {
    "ATECO2025": [
      {
        "code": "01.11",
        "description": "Coltivazione di cereali (escluso il riso)",
        "isAIInferred": false
      }
    ],
    "ISIC": [
      {
        "code": "0111",
        "description": "Growing of cereals (except rice)...",
        "isAIInferred": true
      }
    ],
    "NACE": [
      {
        "code": "01.11",
        "description": "NACE 01.11 - AI mapped from ISIC 0111",
        "isAIInferred": true
      }
    ]
  }
}

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4. Addresses

Addresses are critical for verification, communication, and compliance (especially for KYC/AML requirements), but registries store them as unstructured text strings in various formats. Parsing addresses correctly is challenging because formats vary by country, and components like street numbers, postal codes, and administrative divisions are positioned differently. We parse and structure unstructured address strings into standardized component parts, enabling you to validate addresses, perform geocoding, and integrate with address validation services without writing country-specific parsing logic. How we do it: We use pattern recognition and country-specific parsing rules to extract address components, then normalize them according to international standards. Country codes follow ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 format for consistency.
  • Street
  • House Number
  • Postal Code
  • City
  • Country (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2)

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5. Status

Company status information is crucial for risk assessment—you need to know if a company is active, dissolved, in liquidation, or bankrupt before entering into business relationships. However, registries use different terminology and status codes, and some countries have complex status hierarchies that don’t map cleanly to simple active/inactive states. We normalize company status to a simple active/inactive boolean and a standardized status enum, making it easy to filter and reason about company status across jurisdictions without learning each country’s specific status terminology. How we do it: We map local status codes and descriptions to standardized status categories, preserving the original status information while providing a clean, queryable boolean and enum field.
  • Active: true / false
  • Status: active, dissolved, liquidation, bankruptcy, dormant