Singapore families setting up a private trust company (PTC) usually reach the same conclusion within their first planning meeting: someone still has to hold the shares of the PTC itself, and whoever that is should not, in the ordinary sense, "own" it. This is the essence of the orphan structure, and Singapore practitioners now have [...]
If your family's Single Family Office ("SFO") was set up in Singapore before 15 June 2026, there is a filing you cannot afford to overlook: the MAS Notification under the revised licensing exemption framework for Single Family Offices. Every existing SFO that wants to keep operating without a capital markets services licence must submit this [...]
When a Singapore family sets up a private trust company (PTC) to act as trustee of the family's wealth, the governance question that eventually surfaces is not who owns the PTC's shares, it is who actually controls what the PTC does once nobody in the ordinary sense "owns" it. In an orphan structure, where the [...]
Singapore has no non-charitable purpose trust regime, so families cannot use the BVI or Cayman style orphan structure to hold PTC shares. Here is what they use instead.
Singapore has become the default answer when a wealthy family asks where to base its wealth management operation in Asia. That success has created a choice that trips up many principals: should the family build its own Single Family Office (SFO), or should it join, or later spin up, a Multi-Family Office (MFO) serving several [...]
Singapore's Variable Capital Company (VCC) framework has matured significantly since its launch in 2020. By mid-2026, over a thousand VCCs have been incorporated, and the structure has become the vehicle of choice for fund managers and family offices domiciling in Asia. But the regulatory and compliance landscape has shifted — and fund managers setting up [...]
Singapore has cemented itself as Asia's leading family office hub. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) reported that the number of single family offices in Singapore had crossed 2,000 by the end of 2024, with the trajectory continuing to climb through 2026 as more high-net-worth families and Asian principals consolidate their wealth-management activities here. Yet [...]
13O or 13U? The Question Every Family Office Faces For families establishing a Singapore family office, two tax incentive schemes dominate the conversation: Section 13O (Onshore Fund Tax Incentive) and Section 13U (Enhanced-Tier Fund Tax Incentive). Both exempt qualifying fund income from Singapore tax. Both are administered by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). But [...]
Singapore's Global Investor Programme (GIP) remains one of the most direct routes for high-net-worth investors to obtain Singapore Permanent Residence (PR) — but it is also one of the most misunderstood. Administered by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), the GIP is not a passive "investor visa" handed out for parking money in a bank [...]