Nominee Services

Most of the jurisdictions require a company formation to provide the personal information of the director(s) and shareholder(s) to be registered in the public files of the Companies Registry. Nominee director and/or shareholder is someone that put forward their name in the corporate documents in place of the beneficiary and principal of the company so that the beneficiary and principals detail can remain private.

IMPORTANT NOTE – Each Beneficiary and Principal is assigned to a single nominee. When a company has multiple Beneficiaries or Principals that require Nominee services, each Beneficiary or Principal will require a separate Nominee to represent them. Keyway do not provide one Nominee to multiple Beneficiary or Principal to mitigate any future dispute between various Beneficiaries or Principals affecting the nominee relationship. Separate contracts will be provided for each Nominee arrangement.

Reasons For Using Keyway’s Nominee Service

By using a nominee in corporate documents, the beneficiary and principals can achieve additional anonymity and confidentiality. Even for jurisdictions without public accessible records, there are privacy and confidentiality reasons for employing a nominee to act as director and/or shareholder. Reasons may vary from not letting your commercial rivals know your company structure, avoiding credit search agencies from finding out your wealth to personal reasons such as limiting your family from discovering your assets. Keyway has provided nominee services since our incorporation in 1979, with this in mind, we try to protect and safeguard all possible threats as we understand any mistake would affect our clients and tarnish our reputation.

How We Protect You

For nominees to be listed as director or shareholder of your company, it does not mean that they necessarily control the related bank or investment accounts. You can use nominees in a way that they have absolutely nothing to do with the investments or financial matters. If you arrange things properly, the nominees do not even have to know what your investments are, let alone have access to them.

Seven Aspects That Keyway Has In Place To Protect You Interests

  1. Professional Nominees – We only provide experienced nominees to act for you;
  2. Nominees Living Abroad – Nominees live in the countries away from your assets and with no access;
  3. Bank Account – As the bank account will be established for you by our head-office, the appointed nominees will not have details of the bank account. If you establish a bank account via Keyway, we will also ensure the bank is notified that there is a nominee arrangement and the nominee does not, in any circumstances, have access to the funds in the bank account;
  4. Power of Attorney – This is a document that describes you as the one who has complete control of the company, and the nominee is only a figure head of the company. This is a valid document to proof you have complete control over the business affairs of the Company, such as entering into agreements;
  5. Nominee Agreement – The exercisable activities and restricted activities of the nominee will be listed out in the nominee agreement which would provide a high level of protection;
  6. Declaration of Trust (stamped) – It is a document that indicates you are in fact the principal and/or beneficial owner of the company and the nominee is only acting on your behalf. This document will then be taken for stamping at the Hong Kong Stamp Office to validate its execution date and ensure the legality of the document; and
  7. Signed resignation from the nominee is provided to you which would allow you to resign the nominee and appointment a new nominee anytime.

Generally, our professional nominee director can provide the following services to help you stay on top of the latest regulations:-

  1. Assist with your business’s daily operations
  2. Filing annual declaration documents
  3. Apply for apostille and legal documents
  4. Review your financials and provide you with guidance

Due Diligence

To protect our Keyway and our existing clients, we need to comply with regulations such as Anti-Money Laundering Act. As a result, we need to perform Due Diligence and Know Your Client for all nominee services and we currently only offer nominee service to existing clients that has incorporated with Keyway. Furthermore, please note that it is required for you to provide us the due diligence and know-your-client documents for our assessment. After the assessment Keyway may reject the application without further notice or reason.