One decision that you will have to make when forming a corporation is if you are going to be using a corporate seal or not. Before you can make that decision it is helpful to know what a corporate seal is, but you will also want to know when you would need to use a corporate seal.
Corporate seals are a way for a business to identify itself from other businesses; they can serve as the company signature because they identify the business that created the corporate seal. Once upon a time corporate seals served as a form of legal documentation, all corporations were required to have them. Now it is no longer a requirement, it is a personal choice for each corporation. Most corporations choose to use corporate seals as a way to brand their corporate identity, but there are other reasons as to why you should use a corporate seal.
One reason why you should use a corporate seal is that it is a way to identify your business to other businesses, even business in another country. How this is accomplished is that the corporate seal contains specific information about the corporation and the corporate seal embosses that information onto various documents. The information that is included on the corporate seal is the legal name of the corporation and the year and state that it was incorporated in. One thing about including this information is that it acts as a way of identifying the aims of the business, ensuring that they are on the up and up.
Corporate seals have a legal purpose as well, although most corporate laws now do not require the corporate seal to be used. One legal use of the corporate seals is in the execution of deeds, which is not a simple business contract. Other legal purposes for a corporate seal are share certificates and bank accounts. Some international companies require stock certificates to be legitimized under the corporate seal, less chance of fraudulent certificates. Bank accounts do not always require a corporate seal, but some do because it is the legal signature of the business.
