Company Registry Spotlight: Malaysia

Malaysia, with its population of 33.6 million people and a robust economy boasting a GDP of approximately $373 billion (2021 data), is a prime destination for business ventures in Southeast Asia.

For more than twenty years, the Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM) or Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM), has played a key role in fostering transparency and facilitating commerce in the country. The SSM was formed in April 2002 under the Companies Commission of Malaysia Act 2001, assuming the functions of the Registrar of Companies and Registry of Business. In short, the SSM serves as the regulatory body responsible for the registration and regulation of companies and businesses in the country.

To access information on companies registered in Malaysia, there are two primary portals: the SSM e-Info portal (https://www.ssm-einfo.my) and the MYDATA-SSM portal (https://www.mydata-ssm.com.my). The MYDATA-SSM portal, established in 2016 and designated by the SSM as the authorised Technology and Service Provider for the SSM MYDATA Services, serves as a direct electronic access point to the official company registration offices in Malaysia. MYDATA ensures legitimate and legal access to information on companies, businesses and partnerships incorporated and registered in the country.

The Malaysian company registry offers various information and documents to satisfy the public’s business inquiries. The main document is the Registry Extract, which provides comprehensive data on company information, officers, and shareholders.

The types of companies whose details are listed in the registry include Sole Proprietorships, Partnerships, Companies Limited by Share, Companies Limited by Guarantee, Unlimited Companies, and Limited Liability Partnerships. The documents provided by SSM provide valuable insights into the ownership structures and financial standing of registered companies.

To access these details, users need to register an account on the MYDATA-SSM portal. Payments for documents can be made by credit cards directly on the portal.

As of the end of 2022, the Malaysian company registry counted a total of 1,482,579 registered companies, 8,481,655 registered businesses, and 30,252 Limited Liability Partnerships (Source). In the same year, there were 48,253 new companies incorporated, along with 320,703 new businesses and 3,661 new Limited Liability Partnerships (Source). This means that approximately 3.3% of companies, 3.8% of businesses, and 12.1% of Limited Liability Partnerships present in the registry at the beginning of 2023 were incorporated in the course of the previous calendar year.

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, delivering cutting-edge client onboarding to newly incorporated businesses in Malaysia and around the world requires real-time access to the local registries. In fact, traditional static databases, updated at intervals, simply can’t keep up with the tens of thousands of new companies registered annually. Relying on such sources for client verification would only lead to unnecessary delays and risks of dangerous inaccuracies in KYC and KYB procedures.

By making real-time registry access a key component of your KYC and KYB process, you can gain peace of mind that the information you are using to verify newly incorporated clients is as accurate and as extensive as it can be. Leveraging the Malaysian registry’s up-to-date information empowers compliance teams to effectively combat fraud and money laundering while providing seamless customer-centric onboarding experiences.

With Know Your Customer, businesses can not only retrieve information from the company registry in Malaysia but also enjoy standardised access to local registries in 125+ countries worldwide. Our user-friendly platform and single API provide compliance teams with real-time and accurate documentation and shareholder data on companies they are looking to verify during onboarding or periodic reviews. Additionally, our end-to-end digital compliance workflow helps teams manage and monitor compliance processes according to local and international regulations