Company Secretary in Singapore

The corporate secretary is an officer every Singapore company must have. Their job is to make sure company paperwork is in order, on time, and in compliance with the law. This critical role requires various certifications and involves a lot of responsibility.

If you like. First, you need to have all the qualifications of a Corporate Secretary plus 5 years of experience. Second, you have to be a Singapore citizen, or a permanent resident, or an EntrePass holder. Finally, you can’t be both the only director and the Corporate Secretary.

No, these are two different roles in the company. Your Corporate Secretary does not receive the director status. However, if the same person wants to be both, Singapore law allows it. In this case, there must be other directors — a single director can’t be a Corporate Secretary, too.

You can hire a Corporate Secretary as your employee or outsource this service. Often a company does not have enough secretarial tasks for a full in-house job. When you entrust this role to Osome, you don’t have to pay a salary and associated taxes. The expense is limited to the package you choose.

Company secretary duties and functions are to take care of all the necessary documents required by law. For example, issuing company resolutions, managing regulatory filings and maintaining company books. It is their job to process every decision and every change your business goes through and report to ACRA accordingly.

Only really big companies need an in-house corporate secretary – because in a small one the officer simply does not have much to do. Unless there are constant changes to the company’s top management, constitution, business activities, and shareholders, the corporate secretary only is only busy preparing for the Annual General Meeting and filing the Annual Return once a year. If that is your case, you can follow the example of most small and medium-sized companies in Singapore and outsource the secretary.

First, a Corporate Secretary tracks changes in your company and reports to ACRA. Whenever you change directors, auditors, secretaries, shareholders, your share capital or the company name they send a notice. Then there are several registers they have to maintain, like the Register of Company Charges or the Register of Controllers. They are in charge of preparing and recording board minutes and annual general meetings, official correspondence and insurance.