Nominee Director Cyprus Services Give Your Company a Licensed Board Presence

Obligations That Cannot Be Waived

• Acting in good faith and in what the appointee honestly believes serves the company.
• Exercising skill, care and diligence appropriate to the role.
• Avoiding conflicts and declaring any interest in transactions.
• Maintaining the statutory books, filing annual returns and signing off financial statements.
• Declining instructions that would breach Cypriot or overseas rules.

That final point deserves emphasis. A director who signs whatever arrives by email is not protecting you; they are creating evidence of a sham board.

What The Arrangement Will Not Deliver

• Anonymity from regulators. The Tax Department, MOKAS, the Police and CySEC reach beneficial ownership data without restriction.
• Anonymity from banks. Every account application requires identification of the ultimate owner before onboarding completes.
• Automatic substance. A local appointee alone does not prove that decisions are genuinely taken on the island.
• Insulation from liability. Duties attach to the office of a company director, not to the individual’s motive for accepting it.
• A shield in litigation. Courts can and do look behind the board where the arrangement is used improperly.

Well Suited

• A holding company whose beneficial owner lives in a jurisdiction with aggressive controlled foreign company rules.
• Founders whose commercial position would weaken if competitors could read their involvement off a public search.
• Companies needing decisions executed locally within banking hours.
• Entities that also require a resident secretary and a compliant address alongside the board seat.

Poorly Suited

• Anyone seeking to conceal ownership from a bank, a court or a tax authority.
• Businesses wanting nominee directors who will sign without reading.
• Ventures in sectors our onboarding cannot clear, since a licensed provider must decline unacceptable risk.
• Anyone unwilling to supply source of wealth evidence.

We turn away enquiries in the final category every month, and any provider who does not is worth avoiding.

Provided by the Firm

• Individual or corporate nominee appointees, chosen against your governance needs rather than allocated at random.
• Individual appointees who sit on a deliberately limited number of boards, which matters when a bank asks how many.
• Secretarial services, statutory books and Registrar filings for the company.
• A registered office at our Nicosia address, with advanced substance options where a genuine workplace is needed.
• Preparation and execution of agreements and powers of attorney.
• Board minutes documenting where and how company decisions were taken.
• Bank account opening and ongoing operation of the mandate.
• Accounting, tax, VAT and audit services.
• Mergers, liquidations and changes to the share register.

Stays With You

• Commercial choices, which the appointee implements rather than originates.
• Source of wealth and source of funds evidence, refreshed periodically.
• Notifying us before any transaction that changes the risk picture.
• Signing the engagement terms and the indemnity that sits behind them.

C. Savva & Associates holds a licence from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission under number 29/196. Supervision of this market runs through three separate routes, being CySEC for administrative service providers, the Cyprus Bar Association for advocates, and ICPAC for accountancy practices. Plenty of cheaper nominee offers come from businesses sitting outside all three.

Charles Savva founded the practice in 2009 and has worked on the island since 2001. He is a UK-qualified Chartered Accountant, holds an MBA in Corporate Finance from the Schulich School of Business, and belongs to the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.

• Seventeen years of continuous operation in corporate and fiduciary work.
• Licensed and supervised, with the licence number published rather than implied.
• Memberships covering ICPAC, ICAEW, ACCA, the Association of International Accountants and STEP.
• Client companies spanning technology, forex, shipping, pharmaceuticals and family offices.

No, and any provider suggesting otherwise is misleading you. Your identity is filed in the beneficial ownership record, which competent authorities, including tax and law enforcement bodies, can access without restriction. Banks identify you fully before opening an account, and they verify it again at review. What the appointment achieves is narrower and still worthwhile: your involvement stays off the publicly searchable list of officers. That is privacy from competitors and casual searches, not from the state.

Two risks matter. First, a poorly run board invites a foreign tax authority to argue the business is managed from your home country, which can create an unexpected charge there. Second, an appointee who signs without scrutiny may expose the entity to breaches for which it, and sometimes you, answer. Both risks fall sharply where the appointee genuinely reviews resolutions, meetings are minuted properly, and the engagement terms allocate responsibility clearly between the company and the provider.

Annual retainers include the board seat, secretarial cover and the office address, and they vary with entity count and risk rating. Activity work is billed as it arises, so a dormant holding vehicle costs materially less than a trading business signing contracts weekly. Onboarding is charged once at the start. We issue a written annual quotation per entity before appointment, and we avoid publishing a headline rate because it would mislead most enquirers.

Sometimes, though fewer clients do than before, tax residency now follows incorporation under Cypriot law unless a treaty overrides it, so the old residency argument has weakened considerably. The remaining reasons are defensive: treaty tie-breaker analysis, banking expectations, and rebutting a foreign authority that claims effective management sits in its territory. We assess this honestly at onboarding and will tell you plainly where the appointment adds nothing to your position, which is not a conversation every provider in this market is willing to have.

Yes, and that protection is the point. Duties run to the entity itself, so an appointee must decline unlawful instructions, requests falling outside the objects clause, or matters they cannot properly assess. Refusals are rare and always explained. If you need a board that executes without question, this service is the wrong fit for your company, and any provider willing to supply that is exposing you to far more than they appear to be saving you.

Removal follows the shareholders’ will, so control never leaves you. A resolution, a consent to act from the incoming appointee and a filing with the Registrar complete the change, usually inside a week once fees are settled. We do not hold entities hostage over unpaid invoices, though outstanding balances must be cleared. Handover files, statutory books and correspondence transfer promptly to whichever firm takes over the company, and we assist the incoming provider directly.

Identification and proof of address for every controller and beneficial holder, evidence of how the wealth behind the entity arose, a description of intended activity with expected counterparties and volumes, and constitutional documents where the entity already exists. Regulated or higher-risk sectors need more. Nothing proceeds until that file satisfies our compliance team, which typically takes days rather than weeks where the material arrives ready. Gaps get flagged at the outset rather than surfacing late.