Licensed trust or company service providers (TCSP) in Hong Kong

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Licensed trust or company service providers (TCSP) in Hong Kong

Before you hire someone to set up a company, act as company secretary or give you a registered address, it is worth knowing whether they hold a licence. In Hong Kong, providing these services as a business needs a trust or company service provider (TCSP) licence from the Companies Registry. This page lists all 7,509 licensees on the Registry’s published list: search by name or licence number, or browse by district.

What a TCSP licence is

Under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance (Cap. 615), anyone who carries on a trust or company service business in Hong Kong must apply for a licence. Carrying on the business without one is an offence, punishable on conviction by a fine of up to HK$100,000 and imprisonment for up to six months.

A trust or company service means providing one or more of these services to other people in Hong Kong, as a business:

• forming corporations or other legal persons;
• acting, or arranging for someone else to act, as a director or secretary of a corporation, a partner of a partnership, or in a similar position for another legal person;
• providing a registered office, business address, correspondence or administrative address;
• acting, or arranging for someone else to act, as the trustee of an express trust, or as a nominee shareholder (except for a corporation whose securities are listed on a recognized stock market).

A licence is valid for three years and contains the licensee’s name and business address. The Registrar of Companies may attach conditions to it, and may revoke or suspend it if no longer satisfied that the licensee, or its ultimate owner, partner or director, is fit and proper. Licensees must follow the Ordinance and the Registrar’s guidelines, including the customer due diligence and record-keeping requirements.

Four groups are exempt and do not need this licence: authorized institutions under the Banking Ordinance, licensed corporations under the Securities and Futures Ordinance, accounting professionals (certified public accountants, practising CPAs, corporate practices and CPA firms) and legal professionals (solicitors and foreign lawyers). A provider that is not on this list is therefore not necessarily operating without a licence.

How to check a provider on the Companies Registry’s register

1. Open the Registrar’s Register of Trust or Company Service Provider Licensees and accept its terms and conditions.
2. Search by the licensee’s name or its licence number (TC followed by six digits).
3. Check that the name, licence number and business address on the register match what the provider gave you.

The Companies Registry updates this list monthly and this site copies it weekly, so a licence granted, renewed or revoked in the meantime may not show here yet: the register is the authority. Details of the regime are in the Registry’s pamphlet Application for Licence by Trust or Company Service Providers.

What is on the list

Trust companies are the licensees the list records as registered under section 78(1) of the Trustee Ordinance (Cap. 29); they are counted among the companies too.

To protect privacy, this site never shows the name of a natural person. Sole proprietors appear under their trading name only; a licensee whose name carries no company or partnership marker, or whose trading name repeats a personal name, may be an individual and is counted but not named. Only companies and partnerships have a page of their own.

Licensees by district

A licensee belongs to the district its business address is in: the point the Companies Registry’s geotagged list gives for it, inside the Home Affairs Department’s district boundary; a licensee without a point is placed from its address. Each district page lists every licensee there.

💡 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Hong Kong business registers · Companies Registry: register of TCSP licensees