Offshore Company Incorporation and Maintenance. How Does It All Work?

How Does Offshore Company Incorporation and Maintenance Take Place?
In most countries known as tax havens, incorporation and maintenance of offshore companies is carried out by registered agents regulated and licensed by the state authorities. They are professional market participants who help foreign investors to register a company online.

Registered agents are not merely intermediaries. They usually do the following:

act as gatekeepers to keep out undesirables from the jurisdiction;
make the whole procedure easier for the customer;
draft the founding documents and get them signed;
contact the State Register to carry out the incorporation;
appoint the first company manager after the delivery of Certificate of Incorporation;
lease a registered office and a physical office;
offer a professional director service;
handle the necessary renewal procedures.
The customer is only left to do the following:

consult the registered agent;
provide the necessary documents;
offer several versions of the company name;
choose the organizational and legal form, and the size of authorized capital;
express their wishes regarding the list of managers and shareholders;
pay the duty, cover the services of the notary and the registered agent, as well as other related services.
From the owner’s position, incorporation and maintenance of an offshore company will take place remotely thanks to the registered agent. Upon completion of the incorporation procedure, the owner will receive a set of incorporation documents either sent by courier or, as is now more popular, delivered online as digitally signed documents.

How Long Does It Take to Register an Offshore Company?
Each country has a different timeline for registering and maintaining an offshore company. For the future owner, the procedure begins with a consultation and preparation of documents. As a rule, the first stage takes a week or two. The possibility of speeding up the process depends directly on you the client, i.e. how quickly you can collect the necessary documents.

Once the KYC and due diligence formalities are taken care of, the documents prepared and the legal form selected, the registered agent submits the application for incorporation. A certificate confirming that a legal entity has been incorporated is usually issued by the Register within 1-3 days, depending again on the country. Nevis and Marshall Islands for example issue documents in 1-3 days, but Panama may take a couple of weeks.

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Find out how to open the cheapest Nevis offshore company.

However, of course you need to consider a business bank account. In order to maintain an offshore company, you can open an account with a foreign bank of any jurisdiction, a neobank, or an international payment system.

Due to the mandatory AML and KYC requirements, financial institutions perform customer due diligence. It takes different periods of time at each bank.

Needless to say, if you pay for professional help it makes things smoother. We advise our clients to order the Pre-Approval Service. It means applying for the account opening pre-approval to several financial institutions at once, and this can be done even before the company is incorporated. If you launch it simultaneously with the offshore company incorporation, you can save a significant amount of time. And you will surely find the right bank to maintain the account of your offshore company.

Another advantage of this process is that we can generally share the KYC documentation with the bank, so you save a lot of time on money that would otherwise be expended on things like certified copies, translations and apostilles.

Ready Made Shelf Companies
Local legislation in many jurisdictions allows for incorporation and maintenance of an offshore company intended for sale. Such firms are called shelf companies. Established in advance, they are prepared for appointing a manager, issuing shares and transferring ownership to the new owner. Lawyers register such companies in ord