A new electronic filing system at the Companies Registration Office (CRO) experienced “quite serious” initial difficulties when it went live last December and continues to have a number of issues that the agency is trying to rectify.
n a recent meeting of stakeholders, it was heard that company incorporations are taking “somewhat longer” than they used to, but that this is mainly because of the “very high” number of new firms being registered.
The CRO confirmed that just under 9,000 new companies were registered here in the first four months of the year, and that the figure could hit 27,000 for 2021 if the current pace continues.
“The new system went live on 16 December, 2020 and there was some quite serious initial difficulties involving customer accounts, which had to be mainly corrected by hand, which caused a lot of additional work for our customer accounts team,” minutes from the meeting held last month note.
“Currently, and for the last few months, we have been dealing with various glitches in the new system which have come to light,” the meeting heard.
If the number of new companies registered here hits 27,000 this year, the figure would eclipse the record 22,723 that were established in 2019. In 2017, the figure was 22,723.
Not all companies registered imply new active, trading businesses being set up. Some company registrations are for finance purposes or holding specific assets and investments, for example.
“Problems have arisen in connection with our third-party software providers, and we are doing everything we can to address this,” notes the minutes of last month’s stakeholder meeting at the CRO.
“While we maintain regular contact with these vendors and do our best to address any issues that arise, the problems of this nature tend to be in the difficult area between ‘us and them’ and it’s not always an issue that we can solve, but we do engage with them in order to isolate those areas of difficulty,” the meeting was told.
The CRO meeting also heard that the mandatory Register of Beneficial Ownership now has an 82pc compliance rate, representing 192,000 companies. That compares with 79pc just over a year ago.
The RBO was established under the EU’s fourth money laundering directive, commonly known as MLD4.
The registers were established across the trading bloc and contain beneficial ownership details of all companies and societies established in each state. The deadline for existing companies to register at the time it was being introduced was November 2019.
A failure to have beneficial ownership details filed with the RBO can see companies and societies hit with fines of €5,000 on summary conviction, and up to €500,000 on indictment.
The CRO noted that because it’s not currently striking off companies, the number of firms on the RBO is growing with a high number of new firms.
“The percentage of compliance has therefore not increased by much but when the CRO does resume striking-off companies the size of the register will reduce, and the compliance rate will increase accordingly,” the meeting was told.