Iowa Registered Agent

State law requires a registered agent for anyone starting an Iowa limited liability company or a corporation in Iowa (or bringing a business in from another state). In fact, the Secretary of State will reject your business filing if you don’t appoint one. On the plus side, having a registered agent office gives the public and state a reliable way to contact your business.

You can be your own business’s registered agent in Iowa, or pick a friend or colleague for no cost. But many business owners prefer to hire a registered agent service instead. Why? For one thing, the name and address of a registered agent in Iowa becomes part of the public record, available for anyone to find. Also, a registered agent must stay at their office address during regular business hours to accept legal notices.

• Perform an Iowa business name search.
• Use the name of the company you’re trying to look up.
• Look at the Iowa registered agent’s name and registered office address.

If you want to legally notify a business through their registered agent, simply send a letter as certified mail to the registered agent at their registered office address.

First, a process server, county sheriff, or any third party comes to the registered office and hands the agent the documents (service of process), which the agent signs for. The process server then gives an affidavit (a receipt of service) to the court as confirmation that they served the agent.

Serving a registered agent is legal proof that you were notified of an event. It doesn’t matter if the company sees the documents or even gets them from their registered agent. You are considered notified if your registered agent signs for the documents—it’s a serious responsibility.

Note: If you’ve hired Northwest, you’ll receive your documents well before the server hands in their affidavit to the court—because we scanned them to your online account within minute of having been served.

We scan everything in real time at our local office. No mail gets forwarded to big processing centers or left to stack up for weeks.

That’s not our main focus with Northwest’s Registered Agent Service (though we do offer separate mail forwarding options). Also remember the postal service might not deliver your mail to us if you don’t have a lease at our office.

If we happen to get mail for you, however, we’ll scan it to you in real time. As part of your registered agent service, we can scan up to five pieces of regular business mail at no additional cost. If you get more mail and would like to view it, that will cost $15. If you then want that mail bundled up and sent your way, you’ll need to pay for shipping and handling.

Yes. We’re the only national registered agent that allows our clients to list our address for everything when you’re doing a filing, helping you to keep you private address off public records.