Release notes for Onvio Company Formations

This update implements the new requirements that company formation applications provide a registered email address and a lawful purposes affirmation. These requirements are pursuant to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 and commence on 4th March 2024.

We have implemented the additional changes from Companies House as described in the 18 February 2021 release notes.

Companies House will now generate the memorandum document themselves as originally intended. Therefore, the behaviour in Onvio is now as described in the 4 February 2021 release notes. There are no visible changes to Onvio Company Formations.

Shortly after the Onvio Company Formations release on 4th February 2021, Companies House announced a further change that required us to roll back the updates we made on that release.

Onvio will now create and submit the memorandum as before, but the formation wizard will not show the Memorandum page.

You may see an error message when you open the Report page of a formation submitted between 4th and 18th February. You can still see the PDF copy of the report in the company's documents folder after incorporation.

We are actively working on implementing the necessary changes to Onvio Company Formations based on the latest requirements from Companies House and will release an update soon.

Companies House have announced that in the future, they will generate the memorandum of association document automatically themselves. They will complete it using subscriber information contained elsewhere in the company formation submission.

For the time being this is optional, and submissions can still be submitted with a memorandum of association. In this case, Companies House will not generate one.

From 21st April 2021 this change will become mandatory. Any submissions that include a memorandum of association will be rejected.

The change has now been implemented in Onvio Company Formations. As a result, a draft memorandum is no longer displayed in the Company Formation wizard, nor will a copy be generated and saved to Onvio Documents.

After incorporation, a company's memorandum of association as generated by Companies House will be visible in the company's Filing History section of their website.

Companies House are introducing a mandatory change to the identity information that must be made public by corporate officers, including both corporate directors and corporate secretaries. The change will come into force when the UK's Brexit transition period ends at 11 pm on 31st December 2020.

At present, corporate officers that are registered in the EEA must disclose their registered number and place of registration. Those registered outside of the EEA must, in addition, disclose their corporation type and governing law.

After the change, corporate officers that are registered in the UK need only disclose their registered number. Those registered outside of the UK must disclose their registered number, place of registration, type of corporation, and governing law.

For Director and Secretary records in Onvio Company Formations, the question Is this corporate officer registered in the European Area? is replaced with Is this corporate officer registered in the UK? The appropriate identity information will be requested depending on the answer given.

If you input a company formation project with a corporate officer before the end of the transition period and then try to submit it after the end of the transition period, you will be prompted to go back and answer the new question Is this corporate officer registered in the UK? before submission.