Company secretary in Malaysia

Yes. Section 235 of the Companies Act 2016 requires every Sdn Bhd to appoint a qualified company secretary within 30 days of incorporation, and the company can't operate without one. If the secretary resigns, a replacement has to be appointed within 30 days, and the SSM has to be notified within 14 days of any change.

Not as a foreign owner. The company secretary has to be a Malaysian resident who is either a member of a prescribed professional body (such as MAICSA, MICPA, MIA, or the Bar Council) or licensed by the SSM. For a foreign-owned Sdn Bhd, a licensed firm acting as secretary is the standard route, and it is what every bank and regulator expects to see.

The annual return is the SSM filing that confirms the company's particulars — directors, shareholders, registered office, share capital. It is due within 30 days of the incorporation anniversary every year, and missing it is a compoundable offense. The directors can be personally liable for repeated failures, and the SSM publishes the strike-off list for chronic non-filers.

The annual return is a company-particulars snapshot filed with the SSM each year on the incorporation anniversary. The financial statements are the audited (or exempt) accounts for the financial year, filed with the SSM within six months of the year end for a private company. They're separate filings on separate clocks, and we keep both calendars.

Most do. The audit exemption applies only to a narrow set of dormant, zero-revenue, or very small companies that meet specific revenue, asset, and employee thresholds, and the criteria are checked every year. We assess whether your company qualifies and either coordinate the audit or file the audit exemption declaration.

The SSM imposes compounds (fines that can be settled without going to court) that scale with how late the filing is, and the penalty falls on the company, the directors, and the secretary. Chronic non-filers can be struck off the register. The fastest way to avoid all of this is to keep the secretary appointed and the calendar live.

Yes. We take over through a straightforward change-of-secretary filing — the outgoing secretary resigns, we are appointed, and the SSM is notified within 14 days. We review the statutory registers and the recent filings as part of the handover so we know exactly where the company stands before we take on the calendar.

Our secretarial service is an annual fixed fee that covers the named secretary, the annual return, register maintenance, and routine SSM correspondence. Larger transactions — share allotments, capital changes, restructuring — are quoted separately when they come up, because they aren't routine.