UK company owners in Portugal
A British passport, a Portuguese address and a UK limited company that has quietly carried on trading. Companies House now needs the person behind it verified. We do that as an authorised agent, from where you are.
Verified by Vaulex Group, Companies House ACSP AP021384 · HMRC-supervised TCSP XLML00000218127
Identity verification became a legal duty on 18 November 2025, with a twelve-month transition for people already in post. It applies to every director and every person with significant control of a UK company – wherever in the world they live. Being outside the UK does not exempt you, and neither does owning a company that files dormant accounts.
Miss your window and a note appears against your name on the public register, filing restrictions follow, and a penalty sits behind them. It is the kind of problem that surfaces at the worst moment: when a bank re-checks the company, or when an accountant tries to file.
You can verify yourself through GOV.UK One Login, and if it works it costs nothing. From Portugal it often does not: the app wants a UK-issued photo document it can read by chip, the fallback checks lean on a UK credit and address footprint, and the in-person option is a Post Office counter. If you are a flight and a day away from a Post Office counter, that is not a plan.
The law provides a second route on purpose: verification through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider. We are one – Companies House ACSP AP021384, supervised by HMRC for anti-money laundering as a trust or company service provider (XLML00000218127). We verify you where you are, and your personal Companies House code is issued through us.
Identity verification to the Companies House standard against your passport and a liveness check on your phone. No UK address history required, no branch visit, no flight.
A dedicated Vaulex AML expert on WhatsApp, so a question at nine in the morning gets an answer, not a ticket number.
Co-directors and PSCs anywhere in the world can be verified in the same pass, so the company is not left half done while one person travels.
Most British directors who moved to Portugal have the same registered office they set up years ago – a parent's house, a former flat, or an accountant who has moved on. That address is published for anyone to look up, it receives statutory post from Companies House and HMRC, and it is the address a bank checks when the company applies for anything.
You do not have to verify twice. Once we have verified you as an authorised agent, moving the company to a Vaulex Group address is an administrative change, not a fresh identity check. Same provider, same compliance file.
Verified by us as an ACSP, your personal Companies House code issued, and the filing made for you. Verified within three working days.
Start verificationEverything in standard with a 24-hour guarantee – front of the queue, and an immediate retry if a passport chip read fails.
Start fast trackThe same verification, plus your registered office and director's service address in a named, PAF-listed building, and every letter scanned. No second identity check.
See how the Switch worksEither way you start by creating an account. We confirm the price with you and take payment before the check runs – there is no card form on this page on purpose.
Either route is open to you. The practical question is whether the GOV.UK app will read your document and pass the checks from where you are. Verifying through us as an authorised agent removes that uncertainty and produces the same result on the register.
Your residential address is held privately by Companies House and is not published. What is published is your service address and the company's registered office – both of which can be ours.
Yes. The duty attaches to the person, not to the trading activity. Dormant companies still file confirmation statements, and those filings depend on verified directors.
No, and we will not pretend otherwise. We handle identity verification, the registered office, mail and Companies House filings. Where you pay tax is between you and your accountant.
Verify from Portugal with a UK passport and a phone, then decide whether to bring the company's address home to us as well.
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