The Companies Act (Amendment) 2024, which now requires the reporting of beneficial ownership, will be introduced with effect from 1 April.
Minister of Domestic Trade and Cost of Living Datuk Armizan Mohd Ali said today (Mar 27), however, the implementation of Sections 4, 14, 26 and 28 contained in the new legislation will be excluded until a date to be announced later.
According to him, this new legal provision is an effort by the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) together with his ministry to improve the provisions laid out under the Companies Act, 2016.
“The Companies Act (Amendment) 2024 has two main objectives, which is to strengthen the corporate rehabilitation framework by facilitating companies facing financial problems, supporting the recovery of the country’s economy to remain competitive, especially in the post-Covid-19 pandemic era.
“Secondly, enhance the elements of transparency in the corporate sector ecosystem in Malaysia through improved beneficial ownership reporting.
“This act also contains 31 clauses consisting of four policy clusters,” he said after launching the new-look SSM call center known as SSM Customer Care at Menara SSM, in Kuala Lumpur today.
Armizan added that the improvement of the beneficial ownership reporting framework takes into account the latest developments at the international level in the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing, corruption and tax evasion.
He said, through the provisions of the new legislation, it is mandatory for all companies to identify the beneficial owner, which is the individual who controls the company.
“Companies are obliged to report individuals who have this beneficial owner criteria to the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM),” he said.
He said that the amendment was also to enable Malaysia to assess the extent to which it complies with international standards involving the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), particularly involving cross-border crime.
He said, this strengthening is also important to help enforcement and regulatory agencies such as Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM).
“We hope that through this approved amendment, it will help the country to pass the assessment made by FATF AND OECD and this is also one of the reform agendas driven by the government,” he said.
On the launch of the new SSM Customer Care (SSMCC), the minister said the rebranding of SSMCC is in line with SSM’s strategic core which is to optimize process improvement, foster better work culture and provide a trusted business environment.
In addition, it is also in line with the innovation of SSM’s services and products which grows according to the needs of the customer.
The main objective of establishing SSMCC is to improve the quality of SSM’s customer service and ensure complaints and queries are handled in an integrated, accurate, speedy and integrity manner.
Among the improvements implemented through SSMCC were replacing the existing customer inquiry and complaint form to the newest platform known as Webform, introducing the SSM Chatbot that can be accessed by customers 24 hours a day as well as the SSM Live Chat platform.
To make it easier for customers to access comprehensive information, SSM also introduced the Knowledge Hub which is a hub that stores the latest information related to SSM legislation, products and services.
Knowledge Hub can be accessed via SSM’s official portal page.
