What Is the SECP and How to Check If a Company Is Actually Registered
Before you give anyone your money, you can check whether they're actually registered. Here's what the SECP is, what it regulates, and how to look a company up yourself
Someone's pitching you an investment. The returns sound good, the app looks polished, and a quiet voice in your head is asking the only question that matters: are these people real?
There's a way to check, and it's free.
The short answer: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) is Pakistan's regulator for companies, capital markets, and non-bank financial services — including the stock exchange, mutual funds, insurance, and brokerages. Banks are regulated separately, by the State Bank of Pakistan. You can look up whether a company is on SECP's register through its official company search (SECP, retrieved 2026-08-15).
Key takeaways
- SECP regulates companies, securities, mutual funds, insurance, and brokerages.
- SBP regulates banks. Different regulators, different remits — a common mix-up.
- Any legitimate company operating in Pakistan should appear on SECP's public register.
- Registration ≠ endorsement. It means accountable, not approved.
- If someone can't tell you who regulates them, treat that as the answer.
What is the SECP?
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan is the federal regulator responsible for corporate and financial-market oversight. It was established under the SECP Act, 1997 , and it does roughly four jobs:
- Company registration and oversight — it maintains the register of companies incorporated in Pakistan.
- Capital markets — it regulates the Pakistan Stock Exchange and the brokers who operate on it.
- Non-bank financial services — mutual funds and their asset management companies, leasing, modarabas.
- Insurance — insurers and intermediaries.
(SECP, retrieved 2026-08-15.)
What's the difference between SECP and SBP?
This trips people up constantly, and it matters when you're checking someone out — you can look in entirely the wrong place and conclude a legitimate firm doesn't exist.
| SECP | SBP | |
|---|---|---|
| Regulates | Companies, securities, mutual funds, insurance, brokerages | Banks, microfinance banks, payment systems |
| You'd check it for | A brokerage, an AMC, an investment app, any registered company | A bank, a branchless-banking wallet |
If you're being pitched something that isn't a bank account, SECP is usually the register you want.
How do I check if a company is registered with SECP?
SECP maintains a public company search facility on its website. In broad terms:
- Go to secp.gov.pk and open the company search / eServices section .
- Search the exact legal name of the company — not the brand name on the app. These are often different: the app might be "GoldPay" while the registered entity is "XYZ Technologies (Private) Limited."
- Check the record shows the company as active, and note the incorporation date.
Ask for the legal name in writing. A legitimate company will give it to you without hesitation. Reluctance to name the registered entity is itself informative.
For regulated activities specifically — running a brokerage, managing a fund — registration as a company is only the first layer. The firm also needs the relevant licence for that activity. A company being on the register does not mean it is licensed to take your investment.
Does SECP registration mean a company is safe?
No, and this is the most important paragraph on this page.
"Registration is not endorsement. It means a company exists on a public record and can be held to account — not that anyone has blessed what it sells you."
Registered companies can still run badly, lose money, or treat customers poorly. What registration gives you is a name, a legal entity, a paper trail, and a regulator to complain to. That's not nothing — it's the difference between a dispute and a disappearance — but it is not a safety certificate.
Plenty of schemes that took money from Pakistanis were technically registered as companies while doing something they were never licensed to do. So the two questions are separate:
- Is this a real, registered company? → SECP company search.
- Is it licensed to do the specific thing it's asking me to do? → the relevant licence register for that activity.
What are the warning signs registration won't catch?
Verification is one layer. These are the things a register will never tell you:
- Guaranteed or fixed "returns" on a market-linked product. Markets move both ways. Anyone promising a number is telling you something that cannot be true.
- Pressure and deadlines. "This closes tonight" is a sales technique, not an investment characteristic.
- Returns that depend on recruiting other people. That structure has a name, and it isn't investing.
- Vagueness about where the money goes. If nobody can explain the mechanism in plain words, that's the answer.
- No way out. Ask how you get your money back, and how long it takes, before you put it in.
We've written more on the patterns that catch people out in common investment mistakes in Pakistan.
Does this apply to Pebble too?
Yes — and you should hold us to it.
Pebble is pre-launch. Our brokerage licence is an application in progress, not an approval, so there is no licence for you to look up yet. We'd rather say that plainly than let a page about verifying companies quietly exempt the company that wrote it.
What we can describe is the mechanism, which is the thing worth checking anyway: Pebble is being built so that customers own real, physically-backed gold through a licensed brokerage arrangement on the Pakistan Mercantile Exchange (PMEX) , with the ability to sell back to cash. When there's a licence to verify, we'll tell you where to verify it.
Apply the same test to us that we've just described. That's the point of the test.
Frequently asked questions
What is the SECP in Pakistan?
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan is the federal regulator for companies, capital markets, non-bank financial services, and insurance. Banks are regulated by the State Bank of Pakistan instead.
How do I check if a company is registered with SECP?
Use the company search facility on secp.gov.pk, searching the company's exact registered legal name rather than its brand or app name.
Is SECP registration the same as approval?
No. Registration means the company exists on a public record and is accountable to a regulator. It is not an endorsement of the company or of anything it sells.
What's the difference between SECP and SBP?
SECP regulates companies, securities, mutual funds and insurance. SBP regulates banks and payment systems. For a non-bank investment product, SECP is usually the relevant register.
A company is registered but the investment still sounds too good. What now?
Registration doesn't validate the offer. Guaranteed returns on market-linked products, recruitment-based earnings, time pressure, and vague explanations are all warning signs a register will never show you.
About Pebble
Pebble is building a simpler first step into investing for Pakistanis, starting with real, physically-backed gold you own from as little as 0.1 gram. We're pre-launch — our brokerage licence application is in progress and we write about money the way we wish someone had explained it to us.