In view of rising community concern over whether personal information contained in public registers is adequately protected, a new inspection regime under the Companies Ordinance (Cap 622) was introduced.
The new inspection regime will run in 3 phases and Phase 1 will be in place from 23 August 2021.
From 23 August 2021, companies may replace usual residential addresses of directors with their correspondence addresses, and replace full identification numbers of them and company secretaries (who are natural persons) with their partial identification numbers on the companies’ own statutory registers for public inspection.
According to section 115A(6) of Schedule 11 to the Companies Ordinance (Cap. 622), the registered office address of the company concerned will be regarded as the correspondence address of its director (natural person) until the director’s correspondence address has been entered in its Register of directors or the next filed annual return of the company recorded that address, whichever date is the earlier.
Please note that the implementation of the said Phase 1 will not cause any changes in relation to the disclosure of the usual residential address and full identification number of directors and company secretaries in the public records as maintained by the Companies Registry – until Phase 2 is to implement on 24 October 2022.
If interested, you may click to this link for a copy of the circular as issued by the Companies Registry on the above subject.
Frances Chan
20 August 2021