FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What exactly does ddcheck.com offer to businesses? 

We offer professional due diligence checks on Nigerian companies to enable you confirm their existence and other important details, and to help you decide whether to proceed with potential business relationships with such companies or to investigate further before making that important decision.

What are due diligence checks?

These are the necessary, fundamental steps taken by all prudent businesses to independently confirm basic information about a Nigerian company and its corporate existence. This involves a thorough, painstaking examination of all relevant records filed by that corporation at the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission – our Nigerian equivalent of the UK’s Companies House. A full list of the checks we undertake is available under “Our Services”.

Our professional due diligence checks therefore give you a comprehensive snapshot of the Nigerian company’s corporate status as contained in the Corporate Affairs Commission on the date of the checks. We also make certified true copies of all official corporate records available to you along with a standard professional report.

What makes ddcheck.com a credible choice for the checks required?

• ddcheck.com is managed by fully qualified and seasoned business lawyers, with a combined total of over 25 years in the successful practice of corporate law in Nigeria. Our experience in obtaining and evaluating relevant due diligence information for local and international clients is unrivalled in Nigeria. We also maintain a strategic partnership with one of the foremost commercial law firms in Nigeria for all purposes connected with our unique services. 

• Our people are fully accredited by the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission to legitimately conduct searches of its public records, and we provide officially certified true copies of all corporate records filed in confirmation of their authenticity.

• We provide Sworn Affidavits in confirmation of all company addresses physically visited and verified by our people.

• Whilst we do not provide legal advice, we ensure that ALL our Reports are carefully and personally reviewed by seasoned business lawyers prior to delivery to our customers.

• We do not require financial deposits or other up-front payments for our services, thus ensuring that your reports are always compiled, ready and available to you before payment. 

Why choose ddcheck.com over traditional law or accounting firms?

The most obvious reason is the high cost of using traditional legal or accounting firms for due diligence checks.

Apart from the tedious and time-consuming vetting process involved in deciding which of the top local firms to use, you are also compelled to pay expensive consultation, retainer, hourly fees and other expenses in order to obtain the preliminary information you really need.

And because the corporate records at the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission are centrally maintained in a paper-based filing system at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, those records usually have to be physically located and manually searched through in order to obtain the required information. You must therefore expect to be billed by traditional firms for the actual time spent in traveling to the FCT, physically locating the relevant files and preparing the reports you require – even if it takes several days to locate a file as is often the case here. Also remember that an hourly retainer is generally not an incentive to the timely conclusion of client matters.

At ddcheck.com we are focused solely on the search process, and we have therefore firmly capped all our charges based upon the level of detail you require – regardless of the actual length of time it takes us to obtain that information. And because we do not charge by the hour, we have absolutely no incentive to prolong the conclusion of your search requests.

We run a lean, focused, technology-driven organization without the massive overheads of traditional law and accounting firms, thus enabling us to pass on significant savings to all our customers. Furthermore, we do NOT charge our customers where it turns out that the Nigerian corporation they are inquiring about is not in fact registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission!

There are therefore no legal fees, no consultation fees, no retainer fees, no hourly fees, no expenses and no hidden charges to be paid by the customer, except where the shipping of physical documentation is specifically requested.

How long does it take for ddcheck.com to provide a requested Report?

Due to the predominantly manual processes involved in obtaining required information from the Corporate Affairs Commission, we aim to provide our reports within 2-5 business days of receiving your request. Searches can often be done quicker, especially where you are able to provide us with the Nigerian company’s “RC Number” at the time of your request.

The RC Number is a unique identification number given to each Nigerian company upon incorporation, the knowledge of which greatly facilitates the process of locating the actual physical files of that company. We therefore strongly encourage you to always ask for the RC Number of any Nigerian company you intend to do business with.

How does a customer know when a requested Report is available?

We notifiy immediately your report has been compiled and is available for you. We also notify you immediately where the Nigerian company in question is not registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission to enable you act appropriately and prudently.

Does ddcheck.com offer legal advice?

No we do not. We offer authentic, officially-certified information on registered Nigerian companies to help you make informed, preliminary business decisions concerning those companies.

Does ddcheck.com provide a credit rating of Nigerian Corporations?

No we do not. We however guarantee that all the information we provide to you are from officially certified corporate records held at the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission on the date the requested search was made.

Can ddcheck.com provide more detailed, investigative background checks on the named principals behind Nigerian Corporations?

We do not currently undertake such investigative background checks ourselves, but we can recommend reputable private investigators directly to you upon your specific request.

Does ddcheck.com provide Shipping?

Depending on the bulk of the documentation obtained from the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission, we may sometimes recommend that particular documents be physically shipped over directly to you – rather than sending them electronically. In such cases the cost of shipping would naturally depend upon the weight of the document package and the final delivery destination measured from Lagos, Nigeria.

We shall then inform you before hand of the actual shipping cost as provided by FEDEX, DHL or UPS. There are no additional handling fees or hidden charges associated with our shipping of your documents.

Does ddcheck.com verify company physical addresses throughout Nigeria?

No, we only verify physical addresses in Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, for now. We shall rapidly expand to cover other parts of the country as our business grows further.

Are customer requests confidential?

Yes, absolutely confidential. The details and results of your requests are made known and available to you alone.