Whether you’re looking to create a company in your home market or overseas, an incorporation agent could be a very wise choice for your business. Here’s why.
The aim of any business in-house is to keep costs as low as possible. However, if cuts are made in the wrong places or a business isn’t willing to foot the bill for a certain service, the cost of time and management to complete the job satisfactorily can end up costing more money anyway. It’s a fine line for you to walk when you’re building a project.
It is very easy to be penny wise and pound foolish about how you choose to spend your time. Many entrepreneurs find administrative tasks are best left to others. This is where incorporation agents come in
What are incorporation agents?
Incorporation agents – also known as company service providers (CSPs) are professionals who will help you to incorporate your company,handling all of the administrative work required for you to successfully do so. Basically, they make the process much more simple and straightforward. Particularly if you’re setting up a company overseas, incorporation agents can offer you invaluable information and save you a lot of time – rules and regulations vary a lot between different countries, so having that local expertise is very useful. As well as providing local expertise, local agents ensure that each essential step in the process is completed with competence and efficiency. After incorporation, they typically offer a range of additional administrative services that’ll help you and your project. Here’re the ways in which an incorporation agent will help you build your project.
- Local knowledge to help you grow
For an international entrepreneur, local knowledge can be one of the biggest gains that you can make by bringing in an incorporation agent. They can help guide you to the best kind of company to create, help you open a bank account for your company – which often isn’t an easy task due to the compliance requirements imposed by banks – and they’ll know all of the local laws of business.
- Specialised expertise
Having helped to set up projects around the world, we know very well just how different each country can be. Even the way that local authorities treat each different kind of company formation can vary a lot. Getting to know the regulatory landscape of a new country can be one of the most challenging hurdles for a company. If you fail to meet the criteria of company formation applications, you can get set back weeks or months. So, having someone who knows exactly what’s required – even if you know the ins and outs in your home country – will prove to be a considerable time and money saver.
- Providing you with a registered office
Across the world, if you set up a new company, it’ll require an address. A company cannot be considered as operating in a chosen country if it doesn’t have an address there. If you want to base your project in a particular country – or if you want to make the most of whatever structures or incentives a country offers – you’ll need to have an address. Incorporation agents can help you with this. A core part of an incorporation agent’s business is to provide registered office services to give your company a place to legally base itself.
Having a registered office means you meet regulatory requirements, have a place to receive your post, and you get to keep your home address private.
- Keeping your filings up to date
An incorporation agent will know exactly when you need to submit your filings and they’ll keep you informed of any important upcoming dates to keep in mind. They’ll even submit the required documentation for you! As with many other pros to bringing in an incorporation agent, the local knowledge will continue to pay dividends. For example, in some countries, you can pick and choose your filing renewals or the dates will just line up to the date of the company’s formation. In the Bahamas, entity renewals are all due on 20 March each year. This is also when the associated fees are due. It’s landmines like this that an incorporation agent will be able to get your filings ready for and keep up to date so that you never miss a deadline.
- Company secretarial services
Whenever you’re building a project, keeping your paperwork in line is crucial. Much like keeping your filings up to date, bringing in an incorporation agent can ease your paperwork burden by acting as your company secretary. Any files and documents pertaining to statutory requirements will be prepared and filed as you need. It’s just another of those necessary little tasks you can palm off to give you more time to focus on the project itself.
- Local directorships
Every company needs a director. In some places, a company can get away with just one; elsewhere, the minimum is two. Many countries also require local companies to have a local director, or rather, a director who is an actual resident of that country. Singapore, for instance, mandates that companies based there have a Singaporean resident as a director.
Other countries, such as Malta, don’t necessarily require a resident director for their local companies. Companies without local directors, however, may find it harder to get banking access or could find that they fail to meet the economic substance requirements – thus failing to be deemed a tax resident in that nation. So, even when it isn’t required, having a local director can still be beneficial.
- Agents do the donkey work, so you can focus on what’s important
By using an agent for the unglamorous-yet-legally-necessary side of owning and running a company, you can focus on what is important: advancing your project; improving your products and services; and pushing onward and upward. If you don’t use the services of an agent, you may find that having to deal with all of the documentation and filing requirements of simply being a company will weigh you down. Our most successful projects have been the ones that let its managers and creative thinkers have as much time as possible to focus on the core business and not be bogged down with paperwork, regulations, and the like. An incorporation agent won’t remove all of the work from your plate, but they’ll get most of it done. They’ll also let you know what you need to know efficiently, as well as make the entry into a new market and your continued stay much easier.
How Otonomos and the Otonomos platform can help
Otonomos specialises in helping Web3 entrepreneurs incorporate, administer, and manage companies all over the world. We’ve set up legal entities, DAOs, crypto hedge funds, airdrops, NFT and tokenisation projects, and all sorts of mining, software development, and consulting businesses. We operate in 17 jurisdictions and work with the best local agents that the industry has to offer. Alongside our company incorporations services, the Otonomos dashboard lets project builders manage their legal entities and keep up to date with their filing and compliance obligations.