TL;DR
- A HK$2,000 headline price usually excludes the address, the government fees and every change. On our worked example, a normal year adds roughly HK$6,000 to HK$10,000 in extras.
- The biggest cost often isn't on the invoice at all. An annual return filed late costs up to HK$3,480 in Registry fees, and the company pays it whoever was supposed to be watching the date.
- Per-item billing is where a low-headline firm makes its margin, which is why we charge one fixed all-in fee instead.
- Before you switch, add up your last twelve months of invoices and count the days you waited for replies.
The fees that are not on the price list
The table shows what a year can look like at a firm charging HK$2,000 for the named-secretary service. The figures are illustrative, the sort of add-on charges we see in the market, so check them against your own firm's list.
| Item | Illustrative charge |
|---|---|
| Registered office address | HK$1,200 to HK$2,500 a year |
| Annual return filing (NAR1), on top of the HK$105 government fee | HK$500 to HK$1,000 |
| Business Registration renewal handling, on top of the HK$2,350 fee | HK$300 to HK$500 |
| Change of director | HK$1,000 to HK$1,500 |
| Share transfer, including stamping | HK$1,500 to HK$2,500 |
| Board resolution, each | HK$500 to HK$800 |
| Bank account opening documents | HK$800 to HK$1,500 |
| Certified true copies, per set | HK$300 to HK$500 |
| Mail forwarding | HK$50 to HK$100 an envelope plus postage |
| Reminder or chaser, in some firms | HK$200 |
| "Government fee" marked up rather than passed through at cost, in some firms | 10 to 20 per cent |
Take a company that opens a bank account, brings in one director, does one share transfer and passes one resolution to approve its accounts. Add the address and the two handling fees, and on these figures it has spent roughly HK$6,000 to HK$10,000 on top of the HK$2,000, before the government fees themselves. It arrives as a dozen small invoices over the year, which is why few people add it up.
The fee you never see coming
The largest charge isn't on either list. An annual return has to reach the Companies Registry within 42 days after the anniversary of incorporation, and the HK$105 fee only applies inside that window. Delivered later, it costs HK$870 up to three months after the anniversary, HK$1,740 up to six months, HK$2,610 up to nine months and HK$3,480 after that. The duty to file is the company's, so the company pays the higher fee whether the cause was a reminder sent to an old email address or a secretary who sent one notice and moved on. Business Registration is similar. If the renewal demand note sits unpaid in a pile at the registered office, the IRD can add a penalty, and you've no valid certificate when the bank asks for one.
Slow replies cost money too, though that won't show on an invoice. Say you asked whether the company could pay a dividend and the answer took four days, by which time the date you wanted it for had gone. In our experience that kind of delay does more to make people switch than any fee.
Why it works this way
Many traditional firms run on a low headline price to win the client and a menu of charges to make the margin, with a person at a desk handling each request by hand. Each filing is a small job, so it carries a small fee, and each question takes somebody's time, so it waits its turn in an inbox. None of this needs bad faith to explain it, since a firm with a big filing cabinet and a small team has to run this way to stay in business.
What we did instead
Peblx charges HK$8,800 a year all-in. That covers company secretary, registered address, mail handling and scanning, the annual return with its HK$105 fee, the Business Registration renewal with its HK$2,350 fee, and unlimited corporate changes, with any government charge on those passed through at cost. Director changes, share transfers, resolutions, certified copies and bank documents are all included, and there's no second list of our fees.
The complaint we heard most was about waiting rather than price, so the first thing we built was a way for clients to get an answer without waiting for someone to reach their email. Every Peblx client has Pauline, our digital assistant, on their dashboard around the clock. You can ask whether you can pay a dividend, what stamp duty a share transfer will attract, when your annual return is due or what the bank will want for an account opening, and you get an answer straight away, at any hour, drawn from the actual Hong Kong regulations and your own company's record. Anything that needs a qualified professional's judgment goes to one of our company secretaries, and you hear back in working hours rather than in a week.
Every statutory date for your company is calculated the day you join and tracked from then on. You see the dates on your dashboard, we prepare each filing before the window opens, and nothing depends on a reminder email reaching the right inbox. The legal duty to file still sits with the company and its directors, as it does with any secretary.
A resolution, a director change or a filing is generated from the data we already hold on your company, checked by a qualified company secretary and submitted. Most of the manual work that used to justify a per-item fee has gone, which is why these requests are included in the annual price. The people are still here, and because they spend their time on the questions that need them, they can answer quickly.
The guarantee
Any firm can say it won't miss a deadline, so we've put what happens if we do in writing. If a statutory filing is late because of a delay on our side, after you have given us complete and accurate information with reasonable lead time, we pay the government penalty. It covers annual returns, profits tax returns and employer's returns, up to HK$10,000 per incident or your annual fee, whichever is lower. The full terms are on our site.
We can offer that because the platform tracks every deadline, so a filing doesn't slip when someone's on holiday. It also means a late filing costs us money, which is the most direct evidence we can give that we take the dates seriously.
How to check what your current secretary really costs
Pull the last twelve months of invoices from your current firm and add them up. Include the government fees they charged you and compare them with the actual rates, which are HK$105 for an annual return delivered on time and HK$2,350 for a one-year Business Registration certificate starting in 2026/27. For a certificate starting between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2026 the figure was HK$2,200. Count the changes you made and what each one cost, then count the days you waited for replies.
If the total is under HK$8,800 and you're happy with the service, stay where you are. If it's over, switching needs one board resolution and usually takes about a week, though the timing depends partly on how quickly the old firm releases your records. We handle the handover with them ourselves.
