Domiciliary companies have commitments to the companies they domicile, as well as legal obligations. Providing a prefectoral approval number for each domiciliation address is one of the main obligations.
Everything you need to know about prefectoral approval!
A legal obligation
Sinceorder no. 2009-104 of January 30, 2009, a request for prefectoral approval is required for the commercial domiciliation of a company. Consequently, since registering a company requires a domiciliation address, approval is also required to obtain registration with the Trade and Companies Register. This application must be made to the prefecture of the département where the address is to be registered.
Obtaining prefectoral approval is a sine qua non condition for a domiciliation company. In fact, once this approval has been granted, it enables the domiciliation company to provide commercial domiciliation services. Even if the domiciliation company has several premises. All that needs to be done is to declare these as secondary or additional establishments.
To obtain prefectoral approval, certain conditions must be met
First of all, the company's director must be of good repute. He or she must not have been personally bankrupt or have been banned from exercising or managing a commercial activity.
As far as the judicial aspect is concerned, he or she must not have been convicted of a felony. In addition, having served an unsuspended sentence of more than 3 months for theft, breach of trust, corruption, drug trafficking, swindling, forgery, criminal conspiracy, pimping, tax fraud, handling stolen goods or money laundering is also a bar to approval.
Finally, if approval has been withdrawn within the last five years, it cannot be granted again. These conditions also apply to shareholders holding more than 25% of the company's shares.
At the same time, there are also conditions linked to the company's location, particularly for domiciliation companies. For example, a domiciliation company may not operate from a site used for residential or mixed professional purposes. In addition, the domiciliation company must of course provide proof that it owns or leases the premises where it carries on its business.
Finally, the domiciliation company also has other obligations. It must guarantee a certain level of confidentiality to its customers on its premises, and allow them to meet regularly to ensure that their legal and accounting documents are kept, preserved and consulted.
The conditions for obtaining approval guarantee the reliability of a domiciliation company.
The prefectoral approval number is of the utmost importance when contracting with a commercial domiciliation company. Since 2012, the domiciliation company has been required to provide a prefectoral approval number in order to validate the commercial domiciliation of the client company. This can be obtained by applying to the prefecture. Without this number, the application will be rejected by the Registre du Commerce et des Sociétés.
When choosing your domiciliation service provider, it's essential to check that the company has prefectoral approval.
Written by our expert Audrey Nouvel
September 19, 2017
