Process Agent FAQs
Where a party you are contracting with requires the appointment of a process agent in respect of their English law agreements and they wish to enforce the terms of their agreement with you, we would accept service on your behalf (if appointed). The requirement for a process agent stems from the English Civil Litigation procedures. For a detailed explanation of what a process agent is, please see our guide below.
It is not a legal requirement to have a process agent, but if you are contracting under English law, a counter party will often require you to appoint a process agent as part of the contract. This is to ensure that they can enforce the terms of the contract, if necessary.
A process agent is a professional role that needs to give confidence to both the Appointor and the counter party in a contract, in order to fulfil the requirements under the Civil Procedure Rules.
A Process Agent receives service of process as agent for its clients, whereas a Process Server serves proceedings in the UK. Elemental does not act as a Process Server.
We work with many different UK banks and have an agreed process with many of them to make the process as efficient and streamlined as possible. Please get in touch with our experts and we would be happy to advise you for your specific circumstances.
If you apply via the website, you can opt to pay by credit or debit card, and you’ll receive the formal appointment letter immediately. Even if you choose to apply via our Word appointment form, the appointment can often be set up the same day, subject to all the necessary information being provided and payment being made.
We can email a word version of our online form in either English or Chinese for you to complete, sign and date then return to [[email protected]] as a scanned copy. We will then issue an invoice for payment, which can be made via card or bank transfer.
For setting up the service, you can contact us at [email protected]. However, we only accept service by physical delivery, this ensures that no service is missed. In terms of the Contact Name, this should just be completed as ‘The Directors’
We do not normally charge for the mail forwarding of any notices received in respect of your process agent service nor do we charge according to the number of agreements you wish the service to cover provided that the Appointer is a named party in each of the agreements described in the submitted application form. We would only charge in the event that the cost of dealing with the notices was excessive (e.g. because the Client was hard to contact or in the event that the number of proceedings issued against the company were very high). In our experience this is very rare.
The contract between ourselves and the Appointer is governed by the signed application form and our terms and conditions accessible from the link https://www.elementalcosec.com/terms-and-conditions-of-service/terms-and-conditions-for-process-agent-service/. This link is found in the completed application form and the applicant will need to confirm that they have read and accepted these.
Unfortunately, our fees are not refundable. You do have the option to select a shorter initial term, in respect of all our services we invite our process agent clients usually one month before the end of any appointment term to renew. If you wish to extend the appointment period beyond the initial term, we would charge a renewal fee and the applicable annual fee for the extension.
UK companies are UK tax resident by default and although we can obtain a tax residency certificate from HMRC, we charge £50 to do this as it needs to be carried out for each country.
We only provide process agent services in the United Kingdom.
By default, we use an electronic signature for our formal appointment letters which is why we send by email. This is entirely proper under UK law, but we can reissue the letter with a traditional ‘wet’ signature if this is necessary.
No, provided the invoice is addressed to a non-UK resident or entity. We are VAT registered, but for most process agent clients, the service is outside the scope of VAT.
In limited circumstances, we can review and sign a third-party appointment letter. We can not sign a letter that unreasonably changes our obligations as a process agent, particularly with respect to the scope or duration of the appointment.
