Changing company name on mortgage application

simon_or

thegentleway said:

user1977 said:

eddddy said:

K_S said:

Afaik, it's fairly straightforward to change the company's name and get the details on Companies House updated accordingly.

Yep - but the OP says:

thegentleway said:

Yes it is, 3 officers: my partner and I are both directors and GetGround is the secretary

So can the company name be changed without the secretary's (GetGround's) approval?

Yes, it needs a special resolution - which is of the shareholders. The secretary doesn't have a veto.

Correct that there might be some other restriction in the contract with GetGround, though I can't think of a reason why they'd care about you changing the company name?

The customer support specialist wrote "it allows us to efficiently access and serve ongoing maintenance to your company" as the reason.

Lol that sounds like a copy-pasted overseas call center response.

I don't see how a company secretary can stop the owner-directors from changing the name of the company or withhold the CH authentication code from them, it doesn't make any sense.

eddddy

simon_or said:

I don't see how a company secretary can stop the owner-directors from changing the name of the company or withhold the CH authentication code from them, it doesn't make any sense.

I suspect that's not the real issue.

Looking at GetGround's website they seem to offer a packaged service for setting-up and managing a BTL company. They do stuff like register the company, open a bank account, do the accounts, do the tax returns, etc.

Having setup all their systems with one company name, it's probably a chunk of work to change the company name on all their systems (and change the bank account name), etc.

Perhaps their IT systems are inflexible and it would be a painful process to deal with a company name change.

So they've taken a business decision not to let clients change the name of their companies.


(So if the OP changes the company name directly with LR, GetGround might refuse to continue offering their services to the OP.)

thegentleway

Unfortunately the interest rate has gone up from 3.49% to 4.19% so reapplying for mortgage now would cost almost £5k more over fixed term so pretty keen to find a solution.

simon_or

thegentleway said:

Unfortunately the interest rate has gone up from 3.49% to 4.19% so reapplying for mortgage now would cost almost £5k more over fixed term so pretty keen to find a solution.

If the cost of keeping the company name unchanged is 5k then you need to do what's necessary to either get Getground to sort it out or dump them and do it yourself.

I've had a look at their website and can't imagine you'll lose more than a couple of hundred quid if you were to terminate the contract.