Imagine: you have chosen Singapore as the location to raise your business flag. Shrewd step – the nation functions like a well-oiled machine, corporate tax rates at 17 per cent, and the legal system is functioning as it promises. You read a couple of articles and go online and think, “This does not look that bad. And then you encounter your first true need and the entire thing seems like trying to put together furniture with no online guide. And that is a more common experience than one is ready to own up to, and it generally boils down to one factor, and that is the difference between what rules say on paper, and how they work in the real world. Singapore is a place that wants preparation. It penalises assumptions. If you want clarity on compliance, see details about annual filing obligations.

The preferred type of business organization in this case is the Private Limited Company or Pte. Ltd. It provides you with liability protection, an independent legal personality to the company and complete freedom to own foreignly, 100 percent, no local partner necessary. Paid-up capital starts at S$1. Registration fee charged by the government is S$ 315 and this is done using the BizFile+ portal at ACRA. Sometimes these clean applications clear in 24 hours. These are truly good figures. However, there is one condition that often halts foreign founders in their stride, and that is that all Singapore-registered companies must have at least one director who is ordinarily resident in Singapore, not merely someone who comes to the island on a weekly basis and spends a week at that particular time. Whether you have your business in London or Lagos or Los Angeles, you have to knock that wall down before anything shifts.

Hub Corporate Services, which operates out of Chinatown Point and has a history of more than 20 years, provides a Nominee Director service which was created to fill this gap. The nominee is a director by nomination only, not in an executive capacity – he or she will not be signing your cheques, or one of your strategies, or attending your team lunches. Their purpose is the statutory purpose, as they must meet the residency requirement of ACRA to enable your company to be legally legitimate and functioning. Hub counts this service with an appointment of a company secretary which is logical because both functions are closely intertwined in the compliance framework of Singapore. There is no security deposit needed – which is actually a boon when you are already straining your setup budget on a number of fronts. Their incorporation packages have the registered office address, secretarial services, and government filing fees and make up one clean package so you are not playing coordinator between three different vendors just trying to also, you know, operate a business.

After the day of incorporation, compliance does not rest. Within six months of registration, you need to hire a company secretary or be fined to the tune of S$1,000 per director. Annual General Meetings, annual returns to ACRA and corporate tax returns to IRAS are all timed to your Financial Year End date, a decision you make at incorporation that most founders will regard as a throwaway decision. It isn’t. That date propels all dates that you will have until the company is closed. Failure to get right in your business cycle means that you are going to spend years in filing at your busiest times, something that no one would describe as being a good time. A company such as Hub will take you through this decision until it is solidified, and will give it the seriousness it warrants, not doing so in three seconds on a checklist.