ASIC Compliance for Business Owners

ASIC is the Australian Securities & Investments Commission. They’re a government body that operate as Australia’s corporate, markets and financial services regulator – with a bit of a reputation for being difficult to deal with.

Here is what you need to know about your obligations to ASIC, and how employing the help of an ASIC agent can help ease the workload (and headache) of meeting these obligations.

What are your obligations to ASIC?

All companies and registered entities must process a multitude of fees and financial reports to ASIC annually, to ensure your company is operating lawfully.

Each year, ASIC sends the company an annual statement shortly after the annual review date (which is usually the date you registered the company).

This annual statement will contain:

a statement of your company’s current details,
an invoice for your company annual review fee, and
your company’s corporate key

To keep your company registered each year, you must complete the following steps:

Pay your annual company review fee;
Check and update your company details;
Pass a solvency resolution.

ASIC is notorious for being strict with deadlines. There is absolutely no wiggle room when it comes to making payments, and hefty penalties apply. In addition to hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of dollars in fines, your company could be deregistered for missing a payment, and any properties or assets owned by the entity would then be claimed by the Commonwealth of Australia.

Managing your own ASIC Compliance

What’s involved if you look after your own ASIC Compliance?

As above, you will need to pay your annual company review fee for every entity each year by the deadline to avoid late payment penalties (of up to $344 per entity).
You will also need to check and update all company details for each entity every year.
You will need to prepare and sign annual review documents for your company. If there are multiple Company Officeholders/Shareholders for the company, then everyone will need to sign the paperwork.
And you will need to pass a solvency resolution for each entity every year.
In order to do this, you will need to create an ASIC account for each entity to allow you to make changes directly with ASIC. This requires officially registering each individual entity with ASIC.
If your ASIC Compliance was previously taken care of by an accountant, you will need to sign “change of address” paperwork to move your ASIC office address from your accountant to your own address. You will also need to transfer your corporate key information.
You’re required to regularly check and update your company details throughout the year. Including processing any changes of address for any of your entities and relevant key stakeholders. This includes officially notifying ASIC of any changes of address for the company itself, or changes of address for the Company Officers, Directors or Shareholders within 28 days of the change occurring.
You must also maintain accurate registries and records, including keeping Shareholder and Directors’ Certificates on file and holding share certificates on file.

This can all be a handful to keep track of, especially considering you must complete these steps for each entity individually (and also considering you presumably have a business to run, work to complete, and a life to live). If you have 20 entities, you have to register those 20 entities individually, and then complete all of the above things 20 times over.

Deadlines can be spread out on various different dates across the year, depending on when your annual review dates fall. And as we’ve mentioned, ASIC is not forgiving when deadlines are missed.Something as simple as forgetting to update an address could result in losing ownership of your assets – and it’s a long, expensive and complicated road back from that if it occurs. So it’s crucial to be on top of everything if you’re looking after your own ASIC Compliance.

Do I need to take care of this all myself?

You may be relieved to hear that you don’t have to take care of your own ASIC compliance. You can employ an ASIC Agent (like us) to complete your ASIC compliance for you. Most business owners and professionals are busy taking care of other important things and would rather invest in having someone familiar with the process take care of it for them. Especially considering the dire consequences if something is missed!

Aintree Group takes care of ASIC Compliance for many of our clients, for a minimal fee. The advantage of having an experienced ASIC Agent is that we’re professionals in the industry who are familiar with how ASIC likes to run things (which generally involve a lot of snail-mail and other clunky, outdated processes). We use our own secure software and tried-and-tested internal procedures to ensure all your entities stay compliant, and your data is protected throughout the process.

It also makes your entire compliance process much more cohesive. We already have all your entity details together and all the necessary information to complete your annual compliance from both a tax and corporations law perspective.

If you’re interested in nominating Aintree Group as your ASIC Agent – get in touch!