Guidance on firm name
Existing guidance for firm names, provides that a practice name should not be misleading, and gives the following examples of names that might be considered misleading:
- where a member-firm with very few offices to describe itself as 'international' merely on the grounds that one of them was overseas;
- if a sole practitioner were to add the suffix 'and Associates' to the name of their practice unless formal arrangements were agreed with two or more consultants or firms; and
- if there was a real risk that it could be confused with the name of another unconnected firm, even if the member(s) of the practice could lay justifiable claim to the name.
This additional guidance has been produced for audit-registered firms to address the risk that unconnected audit-registered firms may be confused for one another.
This guidance applies to a firm seeking to become audit registered, or an existing audit-registered firm that is looking to change its name.
Additional requirements for audit-registered firms
In addition to the general requirement for all practising firms to not have a name that is misleading, audit firms should give extra consideration to whether the name they wish to use is the same or sufficiently similar to another audit firm, such that one firm may be confused with another. Firms should ensure that, before applying for a new registration or before changing their name, they carefully review the Register of Statutory Auditors (sometimes referred to as the Joint Audit Register).
An audit firm should not have a name which is the same as, or sufficiently similar to, that of a firm already registered on the Register of Statutory Auditors. A name would be considered to be sufficiently similar in one or more of the following circumstances.
- It contains two or more identical words, not including “audit”, “services”, “LLP”, UK, Ltd, “partnership”, “and/& Co/Company”, “and” or “the”, eg, “Fred’s Excellent Audit Services” could be considered to be sufficiently similar to “Fred’s Excellent Audit and Assurance Services”.
- The difference is one of punctuation or the use of a character.
- Names are spelled differently but sound the same.
- The name would, if shortened or abbreviated, be likely to confuse the public.
Where a firm considers there is a chance that its proposed name could be considered to be sufficiently similar to that of an existing firm registered on the Register of Statutory Auditors, it would be prudent to check that the existing firm, whose name is similar, has no objection.
The guidance preventing names that are sufficiently similar does not apply to firms in the same group or ownership structure, or firms that are otherwise connected.