Lately, there have been some positive
innovations instituted by the Securities
and Exchange Commission
(SEC) to make it easier to form corporations.
There is now what the SEC calls the “green
lane,” which is a more expeditious way of registering
corporations, which now supposedly takes
only a day.
If the required documents are submitted
to the SEC before 11 a.m., the SEC assures
that registration would be on the same day.
If the documents are submitted after 11 a.m.,
registration would be before noon of the next day.
This is assuming all the requirements are
in order.
There was a time when one would feel the
SEC deliberately would give people a hard time
forming a corporation because of strict requirements
and slow processing.
SEC deals directly with business.
Business is the heart of a nation’s
economy.
The slower businesses are formed, the
slower the economy runs.
It is that simple, to my mind.
So it is just a welcome development that
things are moving faster in the Securities and
Exchange Commission.
In developed countries, forming of businesses
is purposely made easy with less hassles
because of the awareness that businesses
are the engines of their economies.
Yet there is still room for improvement.
My complaint in corporation law is the legal
requirement that there has to be five warm bodies
required to form a corporation.
Why should this be so?
In the U.S., one person can form a corporation.
That makes things a lot faster, easier.
Here in the Philippines, there needs to be
five incorporators, four of whom are dummies
holding one share each, just to complete and
comply.
It’s a senseless scheme, don’t you think?
I believe that needs to be changed.
Also, even as the SEC has made innovations,
unfortunately, it still embraces the ways of the obsolete.
In filing the required articles of incorporation and
by-laws, you still need to use a typewriter.
The instructions says “Entries must be typewritten.”
Worse, they require four copies.
Hello, good morning. We have been in the age
of computers for decades, and the SEC still requires
typewriters and is still heavily paper-based.
We suggest that filing of articles of incorporation
should be computer compatible and filing should already
be online, similar to applying for visas.
While we welcome the innovations by the SEC
to make it easier to engage in the process of incorporation,
there is still much room for improvement
to cope with technology and the changing times.
Lately, there have been some positive
innovations instituted by the Securities
and Exchange Commission
(SEC) to make it easier to form corporations.