# The test that killed the last differentiator

**2026-07-31** — a live search on ACRA Bizfile, the official Singapore registry portal.

## What I thought I knew

Setu's directory carried 101,501 former company names covering 78,931 entities, and its search
matched both current and former names. That was the last thing Setu's directory did that the
authoritative source supposedly didn't.

I believed ACRA's own search matched current names only. That came from reading their search
documentation, which spells out that the UEN filter covers `UEN (including previous UEN)` but says
nothing of the sort about any of the three name filters — `Name containing`, `Name starting with`,
`Name exact match`. Other write-ups agreed. The asymmetry looked like evidence.

It wasn't evidence. It was a guess about what the silence meant, and I never checked it.

## The test

I took a real pair out of Setu's own production data:

| Former name | Current name | UEN |
|---|---|---|
| `UNITED OVERSEAS LAND` | `UOL GROUP LIMITED` | `196300438C` |

Then typed the old name into Bizfile's entity search on the default match type, `Name containing`.

## What came back

```
UOL GROUP LIMITED
Formerly known as
UNITED OVERSEAS LAND LIMITED
UEN
196300438C
Entity Status
Live Company
Industry (SSIC)
Holding companies of firms engaged in non-financial and insurance activities - 64202
Address
101 Thomson Road, #33-00, United Square, Singapore 307591
```

ACRA resolves the old name to the current entity, and prints the old name right there in the result.
The thing Setu had built, the registrar was already doing — free, fresher, and from the source of
truth rather than a copy of it.

## Why it mattered

This was the load-bearing assumption under the last argument for keeping the directory. It sat
unverified through five months and several strategy reviews. Checking it took about five minutes.

The former-name index is redundant. Nothing Setu publishes should claim it as a capability.

## On the missing screenshot

The text above is the record. I tried for a screenshot too and didn't get one: Bizfile is a
single-page app, so deep-linking to a result URL renders blank, and driving the search by hand hit a
site-notice modal and then a hung script. Three attempts, then I stopped. The text was captured from
the live result page and is the primary evidence either way.