Yes, you need one. No loopholes here. Incorporating a company in Singapore, you are required to leave a corporate secretary. The legislation gives you six months at the time of incorporation and you can then arrange it.
It is more or less a ritual. The other name to fill in. The position has more than meets the eye – continue here to see our newest updates!
Compliance officer is a corporate secretary. It is a highly frequent term frequently employed in practice merely by ensuring that your company is not late in filing its dates, the statutory registers and that any change of company, any new director or other shareholder is registered. Loose a little and you have not long to lose much.
I have also seen founders fail to analyse the same at the very start with the idea that they will do this at a later time when the business will have a momentum. Then the time goes by, punishment is administered and before long it is an emergency. Singapore runs no risk of being too subtle a reminder. It obliges you to know what to do.
The legal legal requirement is not a complex one. The secretary must be a Singapore resident. It can be an individual or a business providing business services. Where your company has a single director whom he or she cannot be the secretary. That is a rule which will more likely put one behind bars than you may have imagined.
The most popular course of action is the outsourcing. Most small companies do not accomplish this by hiring someone in the company. They are rather liaising with businesses that provide secretary services in packages. It is feasible and will most likely be inexpensive as compared to hiring of workers. It depends on the prices although it is normally in the hundreds of dollars per year.
Price is, not so important as promptness. It will not be long before it will occur because you will soon be spending days waiting to see your secretary, or being misinformed. You are just able to omit filings just due to a communication breakdown. That is frustrating, especially in light of the whole job being to see that all is smoothly operating in the background.
People do not talk a lot about limited merit. A good corporate secretary is not just a secretary who puts in files, he is a secretary who identifies the issues in the first place. Changes in your share structure, perhaps, should be made, or you must decide beforehand. They observe such things before it becomes an issue.
The Singaporean corporate secretary is also a sort of go between you and the regulators. You do not hack each and every specialty. They will also help in de-requiring requirements so that you can do something about which will save you time and will lead to less confusion.
It is not the most desirable thing in the running of business. No one gets into business with a mind that he or she will turn out to be a secretary. But just think about it or even rehearse it and it will prove to be one of those unspoken sources of stress that will keep on reoccurring at the worst time ever.