The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues its drive to make company registration faster and easier by enabling more businesses to complete the company registration process within a day.
The Commission has recently expanded the list of industries allowed to avail of the one-day registration process through the One Day Submission and Electronic Registration of Companies (OneSEC) Zuper Easy Registration Online facility to 81 from 33.
The expanded coverage has allowed the SEC to post an increase of nearly 300% in the number of companies registered through OneSEC in July at 2,938, compared to only 1,014 registrations in May.
“Company registration marks the first step in legitimizing a business, which is why we want to make the process as easy and accessible as possible to our stakeholders,” SEC Chairperson Francis Lim said.
“As we move to streamline the registration process, we hope to encourage more entrepreneurs to use the corporate vehicle in facilitating their business and eventually, raise funds for expansion by tapping the capital market,” he added.
Launched in 2021, OneSEC is a subsystem of the Electronic Simplified Processing of Application for Registration of Company (eSPARC) that makes use of pre-filled application forms to streamline the registration process.
The system has allowed companies to complete the registration process in as fast as one minute and 14 seconds, from the start of the application to the receipt of a digital certificate of incorporation.
Corporations that are eligible to register via the “pass through” system include one-person corporations and regular corporations with two to 15 incorporators, board of directors and stockholders.
The SEC has been ramping up programs that align with its mandate of improving the ease of doing business in the country.
To encourage more micro, small, and medium enterprises to register as corporations, the SEC has granted them a 20% discount in registration fees, and up to 50% discount in the filing fee for those seeking to tap the capital market, with the issuance of MC No. 8, Series of 2025.
In June, it issued Memorandum Circular (MC) No. 6, Series of 2025, which reduced the rates for corporate data requests by half.
The Commission has also imposed strict timelines in the processing of applications for permits, licenses, registrations, certificates, clearances, and other authorizations, through MC No. 7, Series of 2025. This also included the adoption of a “deemed approved” policy should the Commission fail to meet its own deadline for review.
“This is just the beginning. We will continue to assess our internal policies to identify the bottlenecks that we need to remove to further improve the ease of doing business, thereby reinforcing the trust and confidence of our stakeholders in our systems,” Mr. Lim said.
