Signature rights: signaturrett and prokura
Who can legally bind a Norwegian company is recorded as signaturrett and prokura in Brønnøysundregistrene and is viewable at brreg.no. Signaturrett binds the company generally; prokura is a narrower authority for day-to-day business that cannot sell or mortgage the company's real property without special authority.
Jurisdiction: Norway · Verified against Brønnøysundregistrene as of 2026-06-28
Signaturrett vs prokura
Signaturrett is the general authority to bind the company. Prokura (power of procuration) is the narrower authority to run day-to-day operations and sign, explicitly excluding selling or mortgaging real property. Both are registered via a Samordnet registermelding through Altinn; who holds signaturrett is decided by the board per the articles of association. For an association (forening), signing authority is set by the bylaws or annual meeting — if unspecified, the board holds it jointly.
Resolving who may sign
The manual resolution runs through the company's Brønnøysund extract (firmaattest): read the signaturrett holders, read the prokura holders, match each name back to its board role (daglig leder, styreleder, board member), and interpret the joint-signing combinations — 'the board jointly', 'two members together', 'the chair alone' — to work out which signatures are actually needed. The whole resolution must be repeated on every onboarding, because board and authority changes are not pushed to you.
Classification outcomes
A resolved signing authority classifies as sole, joint, by-role, or prokura-only, each with its valid signing combinations. When the register shows no signing authority, the honest answer is unknown — not-visible-in-the-register is never reported as 'has no signing authority'.
Legal frame
The governing statute for an AS is Aksjeloven (the Limited Liability Companies Act), which regulates how a private limited company is formed, managed, financed and dissolved. Residency requirements apply to management: for an AS, the managing director (if the company has one) and at least half of the board must be resident in Norway or another EEA state, with ministry exemptions possible.
Use cases
- Determine whether a specific person may sign a contract on behalf of a counterparty
- Compute the valid signing combinations (sole / joint / by-role / prokura-only) for a company before executing an agreement
- Re-verify signing authority on every onboarding, since board changes are not pushed
Requirements
- The company's 9-digit organisasjonsnummer
- An Apier API key with the read:brreg scope for the authority endpoints
Authentication
Method: api_key · Scopes: read:brreg
Signing-authority data is personal-adjacent (named role holders), so the endpoints are Category B — API key required on every tier.
Common errors
COMPANY_NOT_FOUND
The organisasjonsnummer was not found in Brønnøysund.
Fix: Verify the 9-digit number, or resolve the company by name first via company search.
VALIDATION_FAILED
The request failed validation — usually a malformed org number.
Fix: Send exactly 9 digits, no spaces, no MVA suffix.
Related topics
Related APIs
Capability ids — resolve each against the machine-readable manifest at /api/v1/capabilities for the endpoint, auth mode, and tier.
- company.authority
- company.verify
- auth.acting_capacity
Related MCP tools
Registered tools on the Apier MCP server.
- get_company_authority
- list_acting_capacity