Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory, keeps its companies in the Commercial Registry, a department of the Anguilla Financial Services Commission. Its electronic system is CRES, the Commercial Registration Electronic System, launched in April 2022.

The company registry in Anguilla

Two corrections belong at the front, because both are widely repeated errors.

First, ACORN is gone. The Anguilla Commercial Online Registration Network was replaced by CRES, not upgraded; the legacy records were migrated, which is why CRES’s own document catalogue still carries ACORN-tagged classes. Certificates issued before May 2022 must be requested from the registry office directly.

Second, and more consequential, the International Business Companies Act is repealed. The Business Companies Act, 2022 repealed and replaced the Companies Act, the International Business Companies Act and the Protected Cell Companies Act, consolidating all three into a single companies statute. Searching the current revised laws for “International Business” or “Protected Cell” returns nothing. Anguilla no longer has a separate offshore company regime.

The registry statute is the Commercial Registry and Beneficial Ownership Registration System Act, 2022, which defines the perimeter precisely: the Business Companies Act, the Limited Liability Company Act, the Limited Partnership Act, the Trusts Act and the Anguilla Foundation Act. Amendments followed in 2023 to the business companies, registry, limited liability company and trusts legislation, and further statutes in 2024 and 2026 on trust and corporate service providers, offshore banking and special trusts.

A structural change deserves note: the Integration of Registry into Financial Services Commission (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act, 2024 brought the registry into the Commission, with a prescribed date of 1 June 2024.

Filing is done only through a licensed registered agent: the Act provides that a document may only be filed by the company’s registered agent, and that only the proposed registered agent may apply to incorporate. Incorporation is instant, around the clock, with the certificate issued online bearing a system-generated certificate number. Searching, by contrast, is free and public.

Company numbers are allotted as a unique number on incorporation; the Act permits a company to be named simply “Anguilla Company Number” followed by figures. Different numeric series run for companies, firms and societies, but no official document defines the numbering scheme.

Business names and sole traders are not in this register. Anguilla has no Business Names Registration Act, and CRES has no business-name or sole-trader entity type. Trading businesses instead need a licence under the Licensing of Businesses Act, and the Inland Revenue Department publishes the business licence register and the goods and services tax register as periodic files.

A practical warning for anyone researching Anguilla: the domain anguillafsc.com is not the Commission — it is an expired domain now serving unrelated commercial content. The official Commission site is at fsc.org.ai.

Legal forms that can be registered in Anguilla

The Business Companies Act allows a company to be incorporated or continued as one of five:

  • Company limited by shares — members’ liability limited to amounts unpaid on shares; the standard vehicle.
  • Company limited by guarantee not authorised to issue shares — liability limited to the guaranteed amount; non-profit and club use.
  • Company limited by guarantee authorised to issue shares — the hybrid.
  • Unlimited company not authorised to issue shares — unlimited member liability, with a name ending in “Unlimited”; it must file an annual return of its directors.
  • Unlimited company authorised to issue shares — unlimited liability with share capital.

Within those, the registry operates further categories: private, public and non-public companies; non-profit companies; and four specialised types worth setting out:

  • Exempted company — the nearest successor to the old international business company. Its objects are carried out mainly outside Anguilla or under licence, its shares are non-negotiable and transferable only on the company’s books, and its annual return is a declaration rather than accounts.
  • Restricted purposes company — limited by shares with purposes restricted in the articles. It must be so registered at incorporation and can never be converted later, and its name ends “spv limited”.
  • Segregated portfolio company — statutory segregation of assets and liabilities between portfolios, requiring the Commission’s prior permission before the registered agent may even apply. This is where the repealed protected cell regime landed; there is no separate protected-cell statute.
  • Private trust company and special economic zone company — further live categories.

Outside the Business Companies Act but inside the same registry: the limited liability company, registered by articles of formation and issued a certificate of formation; the limited partnership, with unlimited general partners and limited partners liable to their contribution; the foundation, which has separate legal personality; and the trust. Foreign companies register as such under Part 12, filing evidence of incorporation, a certified constitutional instrument and a list of directors with full name, nationality and address, and receiving a certificate of registration. Continuation into Anguilla produces a certificate of continuance; continuation out is permitted only if the company could obtain a certificate of good standing, produces a certificate of discontinuance, and is published in the Gazette.

The general partnership is not registrable. The Partnership Act is a classic nineteenth-century statute with no registration machinery, and CRES has no entity type for it.

On capital: the Act sets no minimum share capital. Shares may be of par or no par value. The only capital minimum referenced anywhere is one the Commission may require for a segregated portfolio company, which is a licensing condition rather than an incorporation threshold. Bearer shares are prohibited outright.

Elsewhere: co-operative societies and trade unions have their own statutes; banks, insurers, mutual funds, money services, trust and corporate service providers, credit unions and non-profit organisations are licensed by the Commission rather than registered in the Commercial Registry; and intellectual property sits in the registry’s separate trademark, patent and design registers.

Public and restricted data in the Anguillian register

The Business Companies Act appears generous — any person may inspect the registers and documents retained by the Registrar and require certified or uncertified copies — but it opens with a saving for other enactments, and the overriding one is the registry Act, which the registry quotes on its own search page: the right to inspect and obtain extracts extends only to electronic access to the register and to the inspection and reproduction of the extract in legible and usable form.

In practice the free public search takes a name, registration number or certificate number and returns: registration or deposit number, registration date, entity name, any foreign-character name, entity type, entity category, registered office, the year of the last annual return or fee, status, and the representative institution — the licensed registered agent. Statuses observed are active, pending strike-off, closed and archived. A second public view lists attachments by type, filename and date only, with no document identifier and no download link: the public can see that a certificate or amendment exists, but gets no handle to retrieve it.

Directors are not public, even though filing is mandatory: the Act requires a company to file a copy of its register of members and directors, but the public search exposes none of it. The exception is foreign companies, whose director list with names, nationalities and addresses must be filed on registration. Shareholders are not public either, and even a member’s inspection right against the company is qualified — the directors may refuse or limit inspection if satisfied it would be contrary to the company’s interests, leaving the member to apply to the court.

Beneficial ownership requires care, because this is the most misreported part of the jurisdiction. The registry Act establishes a Beneficial Ownership Register in electronic form, and requires an Anguilla company to file beneficial ownership particulars within 14 days of incorporation, formation or continuation in — or to state that there are no registrable persons — with changes filed and a substantial fine for breach. The Act contemplates four categories of requester: the competent authority, the Government, a person with a qualifying legitimate interest, and a member of the public, with a public requester limited to the individual’s full name, month and year of birth only, nationality, usual country of residence and the nature of the beneficial ownership.

But the commencement architecture defers exactly those provisions. Government access, legitimate-interest access and the whole non-disclosure and protection regime were to come into force by ministerial notice, and no commencement notice bringing the legitimate-interest provisions into force could be found. What is in force today is collection: beneficial ownership data is filed into the register through the system, access is by request to the Registrar, and everything else is protected information which must not be disclosed, with gateways only to the financial intelligence unit and the Commission and a tipping-off offence attached. The registry’s own late-2025 newsletter records that legitimate access is still under public consultation, and a March 2026 United Kingdom parliamentary briefing records that Anguilla’s legitimate-interest register is still not implemented, that no commencement date has been published, and that a 2025 Anguillian consultation proposed removing the reference to public access. As at August 2026 neither public nor legitimate-interest access is operational. The machinery sits in the system in waiting, with form types for requesting and for suppressing beneficial ownership information.

Economic substance applies to business companies, limited liability companies and limited partnerships, with requirements running from 1 July 2019. The nine relevant activities are banking, insurance, fund management, finance and leasing, distribution and service centre, shipping, intellectual property business, headquarters and holding company. Every relevant entity declares annually, through its registered agent as part of the annual return, whether it carries on a relevant activity and whether it meets the test; full returns are filed only by those that do. Guidance issued by the Registrar in June 2025 is explicit that economic substance filings are kept confidential and shall not be publicly available, with sharing only by spontaneous exchange between competent authorities and improper disclosure a criminal offence.

Financial statements are neither filed nor public. A company must keep records sufficient to show and explain its transactions and determine its financial position, retained for six years at the registered office or elsewhere as the directors resolve, but there is no obligation to file accounts. The annual return is a status and declaration filing, not accounts. The only public trace is the search column showing the year of the last annual return or fee.

Two further points of practice: constructive notice is expressly excluded — a person is not deemed to have notice of a document merely because it is publicly available from the Registrar or inspectable at the registered office, save for charge filings and documents relating to a restricted purposes company. And liquidation notices and the registry’s annual reports are published on its website.

Documents that can be obtained from the register

  • Certificate of Incorporation — conclusive evidence that the incorporation requirements were met and of the incorporation date; issued instantly online with a system-generated number confirming authenticity.
  • Certificate of Formation — the limited liability company equivalent.
  • Certificate of Registration — issued to a foreign company on registration, and the general registration certificate for other entity types.
  • Certificate of Good Standing — issued on request by any person, certifying that the company is on the register and has paid all fees, annual fees and penalties, and required to state whether articles of merger, consolidation or arrangement have been filed but are not yet effective, whether the company is in voluntary liquidation, and whether strike-off proceedings have begun. A separate version exists for limited liability companies.
  • Certificate of Continuance and Certificate of Discontinuance — evidencing redomiciliation in and out, the latter being prima facie evidence that the requirements were met.
  • Certificate of Amendment, including on a change of name.
  • Certificate of Dissolution, Certificate of Intent to Dissolve, Certificate of Strike Off, Certificate of Restoration, Certificate of Revival, Certificate of Cancellation, Certificate of Deposit — the lifecycle and status documents.
  • Certificate of Registration, Variation or Cessation of a Charge — the security registration documents, and Certificate of Registration of Arrangement.
  • Detailed Extract and Short Extract about a company, firm or society — the Anguillian equivalent of a register extract.
  • Certified or uncertified copies or extracts of any document in the Registrar’s custody. A certificate or a certified copy is prima facie evidence of its contents, and a Registrar-certified copy is admissible in evidence as if it were the original.
  • Articles of Incorporation or Formation, the consolidated application forms including annual-return filings, and the notices on file: continuance, changes of directors, change of registered agent and change of beneficial ownership information.

Documents that could not be confirmed to exist: a Certificate of Incumbency, which is neither in the system catalogue nor in the Act; an apostille or legalisation service offered by the registry; a purchasable public extract of the register of members or directors, despite filing being mandatory; filed annual financial statements, which simply do not exist as a filing; a name-availability or non-registration certificate, name reservation being a filing rather than a certificate; and a separately titled Certificate of Merger, although the Act refers to one and the system holds merger agreements and evidence of merger.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Anguilla still have international business companies?

No. The Business Companies Act, 2022 repealed the International Business Companies Act and the Protected Cell Companies Act along with the old Companies Act, consolidating everything into one statute. The exempted company is the nearest successor.

Is ACORN still the Anguilla registry system?

No. ACORN was replaced by CRES in April 2022, with legacy records migrated. Certificates issued before May 2022 must be requested from the registry office.

What does the free Anguilla company search show?

Registration number, registration date, name, entity type and category, registered office, the year of the last annual return or fee, status and the registered agent. It shows no directors, shareholders or beneficial owners.

Is Anguilla’s beneficial ownership register public?

Not today. Data is collected and filed, but the legitimate-interest and public-access provisions have not been brought into force, the material is protected information, and access is confined to the Registrar, the Commission and the financial intelligence unit.

Is there a minimum share capital in Anguilla?

No. The Act sets none, shares may be of par or no par value, and bearer shares are prohibited.

Do Anguillian companies file accounts?

No. Records must be kept for six years and produced on demand, but there is no accounts filing and no public accounts. The annual return is a status declaration.

Can a sole trader register a business name in Anguilla?

Not in the Commercial Registry — there is no business names statute. Trading requires a licence under the Licensing of Businesses Act, and the Inland Revenue Department publishes the licence register.

Sources

Keywords

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