April 13, 2015 – IN a bid to provide convenience and service more business and corporate entities, Securities and Exchange Commission will put up satellite offices in SM malls.

SEC Chairman Teresita Herbosa and SM Supermalls President Annie Garcia led the signing of a memorandum of agreement for the establishment of a SEC satellite office in SM City Manila.

The SEC satellite office in SM City Manila is scheduled to open at the end of this month (April 2015). Herbosa said the SEC satellite office will offer frontline services of the commission including filing of the General Information Sheets and Audited Financial Statements as well as Articles of Incorporation and any amendments.

The AOI and the amended AOI may be processed within 24 hours, she said.

Herbosa said their decision to open a satellite office stemmed from the success enjoyed by other government offices that have already set up satellite offices in the malls. “We saw the experience of some SM Malls and the other agencies such as Philippine Health Insurance (Philhealth), the Social Security System, the Bayad Centers, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Land Transportation Office. And when we saw these doing very well, I said our frontline services are no different from the others and I think it is high time that we set up satellite offices,” she pointed out.

Herbosa also stated that the limited number extension offices of the SEC in various parts of the country has also been a source of hardships for many companies because they have to travel far just to file their annual requirements to the SEC. “You know we already experienced putting up extension offices in major cities only and so other areas are not covered and even in Metro Manila. Can you imagine the traffic that you have to go through to go to (our main office in) Edsa Mandaluyong and our building is not that new anymore, you cannot have so many people there. And the satellite offices is the answer,” she said.

She stressed that they chose SM as their satellite office in Manila because of its strategic location to many of the businesses in the area. “The Manila mall is strategic because you have the Binondo business area. The schools and the University area and all the way to the Roxas Boulevard area will be using facilities in SM manila,” she said.

SEC, she added, is also set to open another satellite office in SM North Edsa in Quezon City and negotiations are now underway for the first satellite provincial office preferably in Cagayan Valley through SM City Cauayan in Isabela.