How to Change Your Company Name in Singapore
Photo by Mike Enerio on Unsplash
The past almost two years have been all about the pivot, and for many companies, that has meant shaking up their offerings and branding.
With a facelift or new direction, some businesses have decided a change of company name is in order, while others have had a change of investors, which sometimes necessitates a change in business name.
Accela Corporate Secretary (CoSec) has managed a few of these name change queries for our clients recently, so we thought we’d share some helpful tips about how to go about it.
1) Reserve your new company name
Once you have shortlisted a few new company names, you need to check whether they are available. You can do this through a simple search on Bizfile, which is accessible from the ACRA (Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority) site under “Reserving a Business Name”.
If your name is available, you can then buy it for just $15, and it will be reserved for 120 days.
2) Get your shareholders’ official approval
Hopefully you will have already raised the name change with your shareholders, but you’ll need to go through the official process of preparing a resolution for all the shareholders to sign and approve.
3) Lodge the name change with ACRA
Your Corporate Secretary will then lodge this change with ACRA. The name change transaction is immediate, and IRAS automatically updates its records based on ACRA’s information, so you don’t need to worry about doing that yourself.
Your UEN (Unique Entity Number) remains the same, and your previously-owed taxes and bills will be rolled over under the new company.
4) Update your marketing materials
Once the change has been lodged with ACRA, the only thing you need to do is update your bank account information to reflect the name change, as well as any marketing materials, like your websites and Google business listing.
Setting up a business and changing your company name are relatively straightforward processes here in Singapore, but the one thing you do need is a CoSec to make sure you tick all the boxes required by ACRA.
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Accela Finance & Corporate Secretary has helped many companies establish themselves in Singapore, and has helped them through various milestones of change. If you’re looking to set up or change a company here and would like some guidance, get in touch for a friendly consultation: [email protected].