Investment Funds, Companies and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2005

Electronic filing agents.

57.—(1) A company may authorise a person (who shall be known and is in this Act referred to as an “electronic filing agent”) to do the following acts on its behalf.

(2) Those acts are—

(a) the electronic signing of documents that are required or authorised, by or under the Companies Acts or any other enactment, to be delivered by the company to the registrar of companies, and

(b) the delivery to the registrar of companies, by electronic means, of those documents so signed.

(3) Subject to the following conditions being complied with, an act of the foregoing kind done by such an agent on behalf of a company pursuant to an authorisation by the company under this section that is in force shall be as valid in law as if it had been done by the company (and the requirements of the Companies Acts or the other enactment concerned with respect to the doing of the act have otherwise been complied with (such as with regard to the period within which the act is to be done)).

(4) The conditions mentioned in subsection (3) are—

(a) that prior to the first instance of the electronic filing agent's doing of an act of the kind referred to in subsection (2), pursuant to an authorisation by the company concerned under this section, the authorisation of the agent has been notified by the company to the registrar of companies in the prescribed form, and

(b) the doing of the act complies with any requirements of the registrar of companies of the kind referred to in sections 12 (2)(b) and 13 (2)(a) of the Electronic Commerce Act 2000 .

(5) It shall be the joint responsibility of a company and the electronic filing agent authorised by it under this section to manage the control of the documents referred to in subsection (2).

(6) An electronic filing agent shall not, by virtue of his or her authorisation under this section to act as such, be regarded as an officer or servant of the company concerned for the purposes of section 187(2)(a) of the Act of 1990.