Regulatory pressures, and the focus on compliance and risk management, drive the need for local expertise wherever you’re operating. But a decentralisation of compliance brings its own risks. Our Global Head of Corporate Secretarial looks at five reasons why you should bring entity management back to the centre.
1. Increasing regulation
Whether it’s local governments tweaking tax filing process and rates, or global bodies imposing top-down measures that all must adhere to, regulation is increasing everywhere. You need to ensure your business is compliant in all jurisdictions of operation – remember that could be different states within one country as well as across international borders - which can add a huge burden to your in-house compliance and risk teams. Centralising entity management ensures all your entities take the same approach to compliance to remain in good standing.
2. Enabling growth
The world of business is smaller than it’s ever been; international trade agreements bring new markets ever-closer, as do corporate international expansion, mergers and acquisitions, cross-border capital flows and emerging market growth. Businesses are increasingly demanding local expertise from compliance while looking to grow even further. But this brings added complexity to international business, and HQ risks losing sight of what’s happening in the regions.
3. Need for transparency
Those increasing regulatory pressures bring with them a need for HQ to know exactly what’s going on in each office at any time. Accounting and business processes demand more and more transparency. What will happen to the global reputation if you slip out of compliance in one jurisdiction and head office doesn’t know? Media and authorities are both waiting for a misstep; transparency in operations and central oversight helps to ensure that misstep doesn’t come.
4. Operational flexibility
Traditionally a company would go to local suppliers for back office administration, or even just do it all themselves in-house - but that traditional sourcing of local partners in every jurisdiction becomes cumbersome. How can you expect agile growth if you are dragging a lot of dead wood behind you? Flexibility comes from the ability to make quick decisions, and centralising entity management, preferably under a single service provider, helps to enable this.
5. Streamlining processes
Often you need to employ staff just to manage local partnerships, and that doesn’t make good business sense. By seeking one global partner to work with on all local needs, wherever you operate, you can achieve efficiencies in operations and streamline your processes –bringing together those needs for transparency, flexibility, compliance and quick growth.
How can TMF Group’s global business services can help?
As we offer legal administration and corporate secretarial services in more than 80 countries, we are well positioned to help multinational companies stay compliant across all of their locations.
We offer one point of contact and a dedicated relationship manager in your home country, enabling not only peace of mind in regards to the company’s compliance, but also significant cost savings and better utilisation of your in-house legal professionals.
Our international entity management services provide that central point of contact for all of your operational compliance, and we use market-leading technology to ensure visibility of compliance across all locations.
We are also committed to our global accreditations and compliance programme, which includes: ISO27001, an Information Security standard; Business Continuity Measures (BCM); Compliance with local rules and regulations; and, a robust risk management framework.
Read more about our corporate secretarial services, available in more than 80 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North and South America, and Asia Pacific.