The 90-Day Playbook
Vol. 10 — For Founders, COOs & Country Heads
The 90-day operator's sequence for a 100% foreign-owned Saudi company — MISA, CR, portal activation, banking, first hires. A companion to our main Company Setup in Saudi Arabia service page.
Direct answer. Setting up a 100% foreign-owned company in Saudi Arabia is a 90-day operation broken into four phases: MISA licence (15–25 days), Commercial Registration and Articles of Association (10–15 days), government-portal activation across ZATCA, GOSI, Qiwa, Muqeem and Mudad (15–20 days), and banking + first hires (15–25 days). The licence type — LLC, Trading, Industrial, RHQ, Professional Services — drives capital requirements, activity scope and sectoral restrictions. The Managing Director on the Commercial Registration carries direct personal liability under Saudi law. Done in the right sequence, the company is operational within 60 days; done out of sequence, the same setup takes nine months.
01 · The licence
Every Saudi company setup begins at the Ministry of Investment. The licence type sets the architecture.
The Ministry of Investment of Saudi Arabia (MISA, formerly SAGIA) issues the foreign-investment licence that makes 100% foreign ownership possible. Without it, you do not exist as a Saudi entity.
The licence categories that matter for most operators: Services LLC (consultancy, IT, professional services — SAR 500K capital), Trading (import / wholesale / retail — SAR 26.6M capital, can be reduced for fully owned trading subsidiaries), Industrial (manufacturing — SAR 30M capital, with land allocation through MODON), Professional Services (engineering, architecture, law — sector regulator approvals required), and Regional Headquarters (RHQ) (the regional-coordination vehicle with 30 years 0% tax).
Pick wrong and you spend year two re-licensing. Tamra spends the first hour of every engagement on activity-selection, because the ISIC4 codes you embed in the application determine what you can sell, who you can hire and which government tenders you can bid for.
02 · The CR
Once MISA issues, the Ministry of Commerce issues. This is where personal liability attaches.
The Commercial Registration (CR, sometimes 'CRN') is the company's identity document, issued by the Ministry of Commerce against the MISA licence. It carries the company name in Arabic and English, the activities, the capital, the registered address and — crucially — the named Managing Director, who carries personal liability under Saudi Labour Law, ZATCA tax law, MISA licensing and immigration regulations.
Most foreign companies appoint the country head as Managing Director. A handful appoint a Tamra-supplied nominee for the first 12 months while the country head settles. Either is workable; what matters is that the named MD understands the exposure and is on the ground.
The Articles of Association (AoA), notarised before the Saudi Notary Public, accompanies the CR. It records shareholding, capital structure, board composition and signature authority. Boilerplate templates exist; for any structure with more than one shareholder, get specialist drafting.
03 · The portal stack
Five portals, one sequence. Skip a step and the next one will not open.
Once the CR is issued, five government portals must be activated. Sequence matters.
ZATCA (tax). VAT registration (5%, soon 15% for some categories), corporate income tax registration (20% for foreign-owned, 0% for RHQ on RHQ activities), e-invoicing onboarding. ZATCA is first because every subsequent portal links to it.
GOSI (social insurance). Employer registration on the General Organisation for Social Insurance portal. You cannot pay anyone without it.
Qiwa (MHRSD labour). The labour portal — employment contracts, Saudization tracking, Nitaqat band, work-visa block requests. Activated against the CR and GOSI registration.
Muqeem (immigration). The Ministry of Interior portal for Iqama issuance, dependant management and exit / re-entry permits. Activated against Qiwa.
Mudad (payroll). The WPS payroll-compliance portal. Linked to your Saudi business bank account and to GOSI / Qiwa for headcount reconciliation.
Tamra activates the full stack in 15–20 working days for clients we set up; a self-serve setup typically takes 6–10 weeks because portal validations bounce back and forth.
04 · Banking
The single longest item on the critical path. Plan it before the CR issues.
Opening a Saudi business bank account takes 4–8 weeks even for vanilla setups. Compliance teams are conservative, and any complexity in the shareholder structure (offshore holdcos, trusts, multiple jurisdictions) extends the timeline further.
The major banks for foreign-owned companies: SNB (Saudi National Bank), Al Rajhi, Riyad Bank, ANB and SAB. Choice depends on which has the strongest relationship in your sector — fintech is best served by SAB and Riyad; trading and import / export by SNB and ANB; healthcare and education by Al Rajhi.
The Mudad payroll portal links to one nominated business account. WPS will not run until that link is live, which means: no salary payments, which means GOSI accruals without WPS submission — which after 90 days flags the company as non-compliant. Sequence the bank-account opening to overlap with portal activation, not to follow it.
05 · The first 90 days
What a clean 90-day setup actually looks like — week by week.
Days 1–25. MISA application drafted, ISIC4 activities locked, parent-company corporate documents apostilled and translated, MISA licence issued.
Days 25–40. Commercial Registration issued, Articles of Association notarised, Managing Director appointed, registered office address activated. Bank account application submitted in parallel.
Days 40–60. Portal stack activated — ZATCA, GOSI, Qiwa, Muqeem, Mudad. First Saudi-national hire onboarded to seed the Nitaqat band. Block work visas requested under the new Green band.
Days 60–90. Bank account opened, WPS payroll first cycle run, first expat work visas in flight (MOFA → attestation → GAMCA), country head Iqama issued, office lease signed and ZATCA-registered, e-invoicing live.
At day 90, the company is operational, compliant and hiring. The discipline that gets you there is sequencing — not speed.
Saudi company setup is not hard. It is a sequencing problem with thirty steps. The teams that do it cleanly run all thirty in parallel. The teams that do it serially spend nine months on what should take ninety days.
Yes — across most sectors since 2017, including consulting, technology, trading, manufacturing, healthcare and many professional services. A handful of strategic sectors still require a Saudi partner.
60–90 days for a clean, well-sequenced setup with Tamra. 6–9 months self-served, because of bank-account, portal and attestation friction.
SAR 500K for a standard Services LLC; SAR 26.6M for Trading (reducible in some structures); SAR 30M for Industrial. Capital is paid into a Saudi escrow account, not held permanently.
MISA is the foreign-investment licence — your right to be foreign-owned. The Commercial Registration is the company's legal identity, issued by the Ministry of Commerce against the MISA licence. You need both.
No. The Managing Director can be the foreign country head. They carry personal liability — make sure they are on the ground, properly briefed and supported by Tamra's compliance desk.
If you serve Saudi government clients (tenders > SAR 1M require it) or coordinate a regional book, yes — the 30-year 0% tax is unmatched. If you only want to operate inside Saudi, an LLC is simpler. See Volume 02 for the full structure decision.
Tamra runs MISA, CR, the portal stack, banking and first hires as one workstream. 30 minutes to brief us.
Talk to Tamra