[Hyundai Everdigm] Using a Seal-in-Use Declaration When the Corporate Seal Is Unavailable

Some documents submitted overseas require signature notarization. These are documents that contain the company's decisions, such as a power of attorney, letter of appointment, and minutes. However, there are times when it is difficult to obtain a corporate seal due to company circumstances. This is true for companies with complicated payment stages or strict seal management. In this case, the difference between places that know the procedure and places that do not becomes large.

Hyundai Everdigm, a manufacturing company, completed signature notarization with Nanum Global in a situation where it was difficult to obtain a corporate seal.

What was the situation?

Hyundai Everdigm is a company that establishes branches in each country and exports manufactured products. In this case, for submission to the Netherlands, the power of attorney, letter of appointment, business register, and minutes had to be translated and notarized and received an Apostille.

The Netherlands is a signatory to the Apostille Convention, so you only need to receive an Apostille, but a problem arose at the signature notarization stage before that. Due to the nature of the company, it was difficult to obtain a corporate seal.

If there is no corporate seal, the signature notarization process will be disrupted. However, if we waited until we received the seal, the entire schedule would be delayed.

How did Nanum Global proceed?

Nanum Global checked with the notary office and found an alternative.

This was a method of notarizing signatures by obtaining a registered seal instead of a corporate seal. A seal registration certificate is a document designating the seal to be used for a specific business in place of a corporate seal. If the notary office recognizes it, the signature can be notarized in this way.

The important thing is that I did not judge this arbitrarily but checked with the notary office first. Because we proceeded after making sure there were no procedural problems, we were able to proceed with the Apostille without the documents being rejected later.

This is a method that changes the method while leaving the circumstances of the customer company as is. Rather than saying, “Get a corporate seal,” I found a different way to fit a situation where it is difficult to obtain one.

Result: Normal completion from notarization to apostille

The signature notarization using the personal seal was carried out without any problems, and the apostille was completed normally.

The power of attorney, appointment letter, register, and minutes for submission to the Netherlands were all prepared, so we were able to proceed with local procedures. This is a case where a case that almost stopped due to a corporate seal issue was resolved through confirmation of procedures.

「Complete without problems by responding flexibly to the customer’s situation」