Entity compliance and governance

In Law

As multinational companies expand, their corporate structures grow larger and more complex.  Growing regulatory demand for corporate structure transparency requires companies to have a firm grip on status and development of group structures. The challenge of ensuring all their legal entities comply with local company laws is a burden on legal departments across the globe.

Related topics Law

The team

Jennifer Cox

Jennifer Cox

EY Asia-Pacific and Oceania Entity Compliance and Governance Leader; Partner, Ernst & Young Services Pty Ltd.

Cameron Taylor

Cameron Taylor

EY New Zealand Head of Corporate Law

What EY can do for you

Many companies are engaging a single service provider that can execute compliance and governance responsibilities consistently around the globe.

We offer a tailored approach to address the ongoing challenges of entity compliance and governance. Our managed services are technology-enabled and structured to drive efficiency, risk reduction and cost transparency to your entity compliance and governance program.

We have a truly global Entity Compliance and Governance (ECG) practice which is part of EY Legal Managed Services and has made significant investment in technology to support an innovative global service delivery model. Our focus is on driving time and cost efficiencies and greater value by leveraging standardization, automation and data analytics.

Collaboration with EY means you benefit from a single point of contact for all your entity compliance requirements with local specialist support in each of your jurisdictions, providing a consistent and harmonized service as well as full oversight of your global delivery.

We facilitate a strategic approach to routine and transactional compliance and provide our clients with tailored analysis and insights. This helps drive continuous improvement of organizational compliance and governance designed to effectively underpin their business.

Our services

EY teams provide a range of services which have been developed and refined in response to client needs:

  • Governance advisory

    We support entity governance requirements across a wide range of governance projects. Projects may be transaction related; triggered by seasonal workflow peaks or organization transformation; or undertaken to provide assurance for the Board and other stakeholders on data quality or entity status. 

    We can tailor projects to meet your requirements. Our services include:
    • Board support including assistance with routine and non-routine board and committee meetings
    • Secondments and interim support
    • Governance policy drafting and review services
    • Organizational structure charting
    • Governance functional department reviews
    • Cross organizational implementation assistance of new local or regional regulatory requirements

    Recent projects include:

    • Organizational charting for an ASX 200 natural health and nutrient company
    • Secondments and Board support services, including assistance with routine and non-routine board and committee meetings for one of the Big Four Australian banking institutions.

  • Entity management services

    Whatever your organizational structure, we can provide seamless entity management services, keeping your entities in good standing and avoiding penalties and breaches.

    1. Health checks

    Corporate health checks validate corporate data and the compliance status of group entities. The health check reviews data held internally and compares it with data held in local public records and local statutory records to match all data sources. As an output, EY teams provide you with a risk assessment to distinguish between material and non-material issues, along with a detailed remediation plan. Acquisitive clients, those with a complex group structure or organizations seeking due diligence assurance can all benefit from this service.

    Recent project includes:

    • A health check project spanning 100+ entities for a large Australian headquartered legal technology company, delivered in four weeks
    2. Annual compliance

    Annual compliance service includes all mandatory statutory requirements, such as:

    • Assistance with all year-end formalities
    • Maintaining company records
    • Preparing and filing recurring returns with the local registry
    • Reminders of upcoming compliance deadlines
    • Updating the in-house legal entity management system
    • Achieving real time compliance reporting

    Innovation and technology is how we differentiate ourselves in a competitive market.

    We have developed a number of technologies aimed at delivering efficiencies, providing insights through analytics and adding value to our compliance clients. 

    Recent project includes:

    • We currently provide annual compliance services to over 1,000 entities across Australia and New Zealand, many of which are in the ASX200 list.
    • Global Subsidiary Management services to an ASX200 mining company, providing a full managed service solution in providing company secretarial support services to the groups global subsidiaries, whilst giving our client visibility and transparency over their group compliance obligations, structure charting and dash board reporting.
    3. Event-driven changes

    We provide routine corporate changes such as change in director or registered address, as well as changes in shareholding or share capital, requirements around power of attorney or document execution and changes in legal documents such as articles, bylaws or constitution.

    EY supports companies, branches and representative offices with entity lifecycle events such as:

    • Incorporation
    • Dissolution, liquidation, and/or de-registration
    • Cash repatriations such as dividend distributions and capital contributions

    We have a wide portfolio of global clients including:

    • ASX200 global mining organisation
    • ASX200 natural health and nutrient organisation
    • Beijing-headquartered, SEHK-listed consumer electronics company
    • One of the world’s largest providers of online payments system, supporting online money transfers and serving as an alternative to traditional paper methods
    We found it with EY.
    Senior Lawyer, Clients Regional legal team

    “We were looking for a complex solution for corporate secretarial work from initial legal consultation through drafting of the legal documents, getting them signed and filed and finishing with updating internal database Blueprint. We found it with EY and we also significantly reduced the turnaround time of getting documents signed using standard comprehensive execution template and deploying e-signature.”

    4. Knowledge and training

    Our knowledge platform provides clients with a one-stop shop of accurate and practical corporate compliance global data, spanning over 90 countries. Our market leading online training program for directors and officers helps mitigate subsidiary governance risk and provides relevant and tailored support across your international subsidiary director community.

    We also offer bespoke training based on your organizational policies and provide director handbooks setting out practical information including reference materials. Training is provided online or via traditional face-to-face sessions across the world.

    Recent project includes:

    • Deployment of a customised Director e-learning platform across 15 countries for 100+ users for a leading ASX200 global biotech organisation
    • Director training program across 40 jurisdictions for a US-headquartered multinational

  • Technology

    Our services are technology-enabled, and using our client portal you can access our services through a single gateway.

    EY technology tools include:

    1. Entity management
    • Compliance dashboard and analytics. EY teams provide clients access to a bespoke compliance technology platform that provides real time dashboards and analytics showing the state of compliance across the organization, including calendarization of compliance deadlines and workflow status.
    • Event-driven change self service tool. This tool allows you to easily instruct us and monitor status of requests via customizable dashboards and reports.
    • Health check tool. This tool helps corporate entity review via efficient extraction of core corporate data from your existing entity management system and data validation against the publicly held registry in over 120 countries globally. It provides dynamic dashboard reporting on corporate data issues, compliance breaches and governance and control insights, allowing you to easily identify potential or actual risks and remedial actions.  
    2. Knowledge and training
    • Global director e-learning program. You can access training via your own learning platform or hosted by EY teams. Key functionality includes ability to track training uptake across your organization.
    • Corporate knowledge platform. Delve into real-time compliance updates across all your jurisdictions, as well as a full range of company law practical data points.

Global delivery model

EY governance and compliance professionals are present across the globe in over 140 countries to deliver tailored compliance services.

EY global delivery model incorporates a single point-of-contact for clients as well as local specialists, regional offshore delivery centers and onshore engagement teams. This blend of resources means we are always operating in the right time zone, with the right level of expertise and with the appropriate resource costs.

EY teams can provide cost certainty for clients with a fixed fee for annual compliance as well as ad hoc work. The teams can provide an assessment framework for cost benchmarking so you can review your current spend on compliance and entity maintenance including internal and external spend. This is helping clients who find themselves under increasing cost pressure. After providing a cost analysis, EY teams can assist clients to implement a sustainable cost reduction program.

The risk based approach means that we drive predictability and risk reduction across the compliance function.

EY member firms do not practice law where not permitted by local law or regulation.

Part of the EY network

EY Law Limited is an EY member firm based in New Zealand and operating globally, leveraging the EY network.
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