Protecting your company information ASIC Review

With a record 11 million company searches made of our databases last financial year, it's even more important that changes to your company's details are authorised.

Protecting your company information

With a record 11 million company searches made of our databases last financial year, it's even more important that changes to your company's details are authorised. To reduce the risk of unauthorised changes happening, we're extending our existing corporate key system so that you'll need to include your corporate key when making paper lodgements of Forms 362, 370, 484 and 486. But we will continue to accept paper forms without the key, if the key has not yet been issued. A period of grace will allow companies to adjust to this new requirement.

Why you need a corporate key

A corporate key is an eight-digit number, uniquely associated with your company's Australian Company Number (ACN). It is similar to the PIN on your bank account and only changes:

• annually on your company statement, or
• at the request of a company officer or registered agent.

You need to use your corporate key only once to register for access to lodge forms with us online. But if you need to lodge in paper, any of following forms, you must include your corporate key on the form:

• Form 362 Notification of appointment or cessation of a registered agent by a company
• Form 370 Notification by officeholder of resignation or retirement
• Form 484 Change to company details
• Form 486 Notification to nominate, change or cease a contact address for a company

We've targeted paper lodgement of these details, (either over the counter or via mail) as we've found that unauthorised lodgements may occur in this way.

Getting a corporate key

We automatically send corporate keys to:

• Existing companies: through your company statement (but not reprinted or re-despatched ones), which we normally send to your company's registered office. Or, you may have nominated your registered agent's address instead.
• New companies: through the corporate key letter which we send to your company's registered office. We've given corporate keys to new companies since 1 March. If your new company missed out, read on to find out how to get one.
• Reinstated companies: through your corporate key letter sent to your registered office.

If you haven't received your corporate key, or you've lost or forgotten it, or feel unauthorised people may have seen it, apply for a new one online. Remember that only current officeholders, or your registered agent, if you use one, can apply.

Call our inquiry line on (03) 5177 3988 or visit our website www.asic.gov.au to find out more

Disclaimer

The purpose of this database is to provide a full-text record of all articles that have appeared in the CDJ since February 1997. It is aimed to assist in the research and reference process. The database has a full-text index and will enable articles to be easily retrieved.It should be noted that information contained in this database is in pre-publication format only - IT IS NOT THE FINAL PRINTED VERSION OF THE CDJ - therefore there might be slight discrepancies between the contents of this database and the printed CDJ.