How to Register Your Business with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)

Table Of Content

• The Importance Of CAC
• Step By Step Guide On Getting Your Business Registered Online
• Once your account is all set up and good to go;

The Importance Of CAC

The very first step to launching that beautiful business idea is getting it registered. The mistakes many business owners make is growing a business from zero to hero without making it legal.

Are you in this shoe? Have you ever thought about what could happen to your brand if someone out there lays a claim on your business? What about government policy? Do you think of the negative impact of not getting your business registered with CAC?

I remembered a dispute between two brands. A particular business profile on Google was being run by a small business owner but was not legal in terms of having their business certificate, the second party claimed they stole the name from them and therefore should take the business profile down or face the law.

Dear business owner, how would you feel losing everything you worked so hard for within the twinkling of an eye? In order to avoid this deadly mistake, getting your business registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission will save you the stress of worrying about theft, fraud or worse unforeseen consequences.

Before now, it was a difficult process to register a business with CAC since you will need to visit the office several times to get started with the process. On February 2nd, 2015, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) launched a 24-hour online registration portal to fast track its business services to customers.

With the portal always open and accessible anywhere, registration has been made easy as individuals can now register their business by themselves or seek the services of a trusted agent to do it for them.

As the matter of fact, why many businesses are still not registered today, this is because they don't know how to begin with the registration process. In this article, you will find the step by step guide on how to register a business online.

Step By Step Guide On Getting Your Business Registered Online

• Log into the CAC portal using this link below http://new.cac.gov.ng/home

• On the first page, you will see Company, Business Name & Incorporated Trustee; these are the 3 types of registration done by the CAC. Here, you have to choose the type of registration you're opting for. (See image below)

• After selecting any of the registration type above, here on this page, scroll down and click on “Create Account” (see image below)

• To create an account, you must have your National Identification Number (NIN) issued by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

• Fill in your details into the form correctly and submit it.

If the account you created is successful, a password link would be given to you via email for your first login. After login, you can change the password to an option of your choice.

Once your account is all set up and good to go;

• Navigate to the name search page and type to search if your company/business name is not yet taken by another brand, if the box is vacant or empty, this means the name you want to use is not yet taken.

• Continue by filling in the two name options you want to use and proceed to the next page, where you’ll give more info about your business.

• Carefully fill this page by selecting your business “Classification”, your “Company type”, your “Reason for (name) availability search” and the “General nature of your business”.

• After filling in the section on the above page, continue by submitting your bio-data and your business details.

• Proceed to make a payment of N500 for name search and reservation.

You'll get a prompt message after submitting, CAC will get back to you in a few days to notify you that the name you choose for your business has been reserved for you. You can proceed after getting this email to register your business with the sum of 10,000 naira only if you're registering by yourself. But if you're getting an agent to do it for you, depending on the agent charges, you might pay more.

NOTE:

A business name reservation is 500 naira while the official registration of a business name with CAC is 10,000 naira only. The corporate affairs commission website will not charge you more than N10,000 if you're registering your business by yourself. Incase where the CAC portal asks you to pay more than the amount above, the site is not real, it might have been built by hackers using the symbol of CAC.

Also note that, if you're using an agent, he or she can charge upto 22,000 naira since they will be remitting 10,000 to CAC, the remaining goes back to them as their service charge.

If after one week you have not received an email from CAC, log into the CAC portal again to confirm your name search status yourself.

You can stay anywhere and register your business without visiting any CAC office, you can also obtain your certificate through the email you provided once your registration is fully completed.

You can follow the steps on this article to register your business. If you still find it difficult to register your business by yourself, you can request us HERE to do it for you.

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