The intricacies of SEC’s company registration system
Credit to Author: KELVIN LESTER LEE | Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2019 16:29:13 +0000
A week after I posted my article, “A commissioner’s priorities”, dated 24 July 2019, I thought it may also be of interest to the public if I will use this column to discuss further one of the most talked-about issues in the commission – the Company Registration System (CRS).
The CRS is the SEC’s online and automated registration system designed to handle the entire registration process of domestic corporations and partnerships and licensing of foreign corporations doing business in the Philippines, as well as lending, financial companies, and capital market participants. It handles name verification, submission, review, payment, filing and up to the approval of documents applied by would-be SEC entities.
The commission rolled out and implemented the CRS in November 2017 as part of its efforts to further improve its services. However, the CRS has experienced several birth pangs, mostly technological and system-related difficulties which resulted in processing periods even longer than those experienced under the manual system. As in other cases, these issues were to be expected.
True to its goal of improving the ease of doing business in the country, the commission immediately initiated administrative interventions and measures to improve the CRS. Its efforts included the activation of the 1) Facilitating Automated System Transition (FAST) Lane; 2) Fast-
Timely Registration Action Kiosk (FAST-TRACK) Lane; and 3) Lane for Express Application Processing (LEAP), which augmented the usual online process dubbed as the Regular Lane.
The FAST Lane is an administrative measure wherein SEC processors assigned at the FAST Lane kiosks aid walk-in clients from the creation/submission/uploading of documents up to the approval of SEC Certificates of Registration. On the other hand, FAST-TRACK Lane is a hybrid manual system that facilitates the faster resolution or approval of all pending applications. Under LEAP, meanwhile, applicants will have to conform with a fixed set of pro forma purposes available online; hence, no human processor will need to review the application.
With all these administrative measures, SEC saw processing times improve greatly. For the Regular Lane, SEC data show that from January to May 2019, 2,877 or 44 percent out of 6,530 applications were processed within 1-3 working days; 2,293 or 35 percent within 4-7 working days; and 1,360 or 21 percent in more than 8 working days.
Under the FAST-TRACK, SEC data show that from January to May 2019, 2,300 or 86 percent out of 2,674 applications were processed within 1-3 working days; 274 or 10 percent within 4-7 working days; and 100 or 4 percent in more than 8 working days.
Under the LEAP, from November 2018 to May 2019, 443 or 55 percent out of 812 applications were processed within 1-3 working days; 190 or 23 percent within 4-7 working days; and 179 or 22 percent in more than 8 working days.
The CRS, though problematic in the beginning, has now improved to such a degree that the majority of company registrations are completed within one to three working days. We, at the SEC, hope to continue innovating and improving to better serve the public.
Kelvin Lester K. Lee is a Commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The views and opinions stated herein are his own. You may email your comments and questions to oclee@sec.gov.ph.