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Colombia BIC companies: what it is and what it signals

A Sociedad de Beneficio e Interés Colectivo, or BIC, is a condition a Colombian commercial company elects for itself under Ley 1901 de 2018. It is not a certification and not an assessment of results. A company adopts it by amending its bylaws, adds BIC to its registered name, and takes on a duty to report annually on the collective benefit activities it chose.

Type: Legal forms and public registers
Run by: Colombia's chambers of commerce, which keep the mercantile register, with the Superintendencia de Sociedades as the competent authority on reporting standards
Since: 2018
Headquarters: Colombia
Official site: https://www.mincit.gov.co/minindustria/sociedades-bic
Public list: https://www.datos.gov.co/d/hjhn-23mx

What the BIC form is

Ley 1901 de 2018, dated 18 June 2018, created the condition. Article 1 lets any existing or future commercial company of any type voluntarily adopt it. Article 2 is explicit that adopting the BIC name does not change the company type: it stays the sociedad it already was, under the ordinary income tax and common sales tax regimes.

What a BIC company takes on is a purpose. It must write the collective benefit activities it intends to pursue into its corporate object, alongside its commercial activities, and carry the abbreviation BIC in its registered name. The law lists fifteen illustrative characteristics, from analysing pay gaps to running annual environmental audits.

Who runs it and since when

No single organization owns this label. Congress created it in 2018 and the national government regulated it through Decreto 2046 de 2019, dated 12 November 2019, which added a BIC chapter to the sector and tax regulatory decrees.

Registration sits with the chambers of commerce, which the decree notes keep the mercantile register under article 86 of the Commercial Code. The Superintendencia de Sociedades is the authority named in the law: it maintains a public list of the independent reporting standards that satisfy the statute, and it decides petitions asking it to declare that a company failed the standard it chose.

How an organization gets it

There is no performance assessment to pass, but there is a filing the chamber of commerce checks. Article 3 requires a statutory amendment, passed by the majority set for amending the corporate contract, both to take the condition on and to give it up. The regulating decree groups the law's fifteen characteristics into five dimensions: business model, corporate governance, labour practices, environmental practices and community practices. The corporate object must name at least one activity in each, and a chamber that receives a filing without them refuses the registration.

The continuing obligation is a report. Under article 5 the legal representative presents to the company's highest corporate body a report on the collective benefit activities carried out, inside the year-end report. It must be published on the company website, or kept at the registered office and sent to anyone who asks in writing. Article 6 requires a recognised, transparent reporting standard independent of the company and its parents, and the report may be audited by the authorities or a third party.

What it signals, and what it does not

A BIC record tells a reader the company took a deliberate governance step: it amended its bylaws, wrote social and environmental purposes into its corporate object, changed its registered name and accepted an annual public reporting duty. Article 4 adds that purpose to the interests administrators must weigh.

It is a self-elected status, so it certifies nothing about performance. Nobody scored the company before it became a BIC, no outside body verified its claims, and the law lists its fifteen characteristics as illustrative rather than mandatory. The real test is the report: whether one exists, which independent standard it used, and whether it is published.

How to verify a claim

Start with the register. The register is kept chamber by chamber, and the one dataset published openly comes from a single chamber; the Pereira chamber's dataset carries the company name, identification and registration numbers, year of registration, CIIU activity code and municipality. Because coverage is per chamber, absence from one dataset is weak evidence.

Two stronger checks are open to anyone. First, the name: a BIC company must carry the BIC abbreviation or the words Beneficio e Interés Colectivo in its registered name, so a certificate of existence from the chamber of commerce will show it. Second, the report: if a company claims BIC status and publishes none, ask which independent standard it uses and where the report is filed.

Size and geography

Our copy of the public list holds 337 organizations across 1 countries, pulled 2026-09-14.

Colombia 337

In the Tokens for Good directory

None of the organizations researched so far carries this label. Submit one, or contribute research with spare Claude capacity.

Frequently asked questions

Is a BIC company the same as a B Corp?

No. BIC is a legal condition a Colombian company elects for itself under Ley 1901 de 2018. B Corp is a private certification a third party verifies. A company can hold one, both or neither.

Does BIC status change how the company is taxed?

Almost not at all. The law leaves the ordinary income tax and common sales tax regimes in place. The regulating decree added one narrow incentive: in a BIC organised as a sociedad por acciones, profits distributed to workers as shares count as non-taxable income, up to 10% of profits.

What does a BIC company have to publish?

An annual management report on its collective benefit activities, presented to the highest corporate body inside the year-end report and published on the company website, or held at the registered office where there is no website.

Who checks that a BIC company keeps its promises?

The Superintendencia de Sociedades decides petitions asking it to declare that a company failed the standard it chose. Under article 7 a company that loses the condition has BIC struck from its name and cannot readopt it for twelve months.

Sources

Congreso de Colombia, Ley 1901 de 2018 (PDF, MinCIT) checked 2026-09-17
Presidencia de la República, Decreto 2046 de 2019 (PDF, MinCIT) checked 2026-09-17
MinCIT, Normativa BIC checked 2026-09-17
Datos Abiertos Colombia, Base de Datos Sociedades BIC (Cámara de Comercio de Pereira) checked 2026-09-17

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