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The corporate secretarial industry in Singapore is over 45 years old. After Singapore’s independence in 1965, the country started growing very fast and became a prominent economic hub in the Southeast Asian region. The country’s corporate secretarial industry also started growing very fast during these times.
Singapore is a foreign-oriented economy. Foreign businesses from the US, the UK, and European countries always manifest interest in Singapore when it comes to company incorporation. In fact, many foreign investors have already established subsidiary companies in the country.
Suppose that a US start-up company wants to start a business in Asia. Most likely, it will consider either Singapore or Hong Kong. Singapore and Hong Kong have almost the same policies on foreign ownership, capital requirements, capital gains, and annual audit, among others. However, they differ in the restrictions in the citizenship of company directors, overall tax system, policies on foreign-sourced income, compliance fees, and more.
Considering the current political situation of Hong Kong, Singapore would be the better choice for foreign company incorporation.
There are more than 800 service providers in the corporate secretarial industry, and they vary in sizes. Some of them are run by 1 or 2 persons only, while others have 100 staff members who can pull off huge operations. Some of them are new firms that bring new technologies into the industry, while others have been operating in a conventional manner for over 30 years.
The corporate secretarial industry focuses on catering to foreigners. Singapore permanent residents or citizens may opt not to seek help from corporate secretarial providers (CSPs) as they can easily incorporate their companies in Singapore by registering their entities on the ACRA website using their Singpass. The potential revenue of this industry in the local sector is very low; hence, it focuses more on servicing foreign customers.
Packages available to foreigners also vary greatly. These packages are priced differently, from S$3,000 to S$13,000.
Moreover, this industry practices taking deposit for the nominee director service. While there are some companies that do not take deposit, others take deposit for as high as S$5,000. The amount of deposit does not necessarily mean new, different, or additional services. Perhaps, CSPs that ask for deposit have more presentable offices and more experienced staff members. Meanwhile, companies who do not take deposit may not have fancy offices and their employees may be new to the industry; however, these factors do not make their services low in quality.
Some companies are still working in an old-fashioned manner, such as maintaining paper files and processing documents manually. Meanwhile, Epica Consulting Pte Ltd implements a complete online filing system. All our documents are stored in the cloud in electronic format—bringing faster, more convenient, and more efficient transactions to our customers.
Some companies still use the old method of signing documents, such as document signing in one’s home country and document notarization for record-keeping. Meanwhile, Epica Consulting Pte Ltd has already implemented an e-signing software, where document signing can be done using either a mobile phone, laptop, or computer.
Some companies still maintain files separately in huge cupboards, while all the data of Epica Consulting Pte Ltd are stored in the cloud.
Epica Consulting Pte Ltd has taken a technological view on the corporate secretarial industry. We have developed our own application to manage all these operations and present remarkable benefits to our customers, as well as to ourselves.
A newly incorporated company must sign over 8 to 10 different forms or agreements. Before the development of our internal CSP system, we processed these forms or agreements manually—from opening the Word template, changing the name of the customer, reviewing the entire document, saving it, printing it, and taking the signature. Now, we only need to enter the records of the new customer in the database, click at one specific button, and all the documents will be automatically generated.
In a typical corporate services firm office, you will often see numerous files in one or more of its shelves. To find out if the annual general meeting (AGM) of some companies are falling due in the next 60 days, employees will have to go over those files or through an Excel record, work on their emails, and email them one by one. In our case, our internal CSP system automatically identifies cases where AGM is falling due. Once confirmed, it will automatically send an email (or SMS if required) to our customer to remind him or her that his or her company’s AGM is due on a specific date.
Every detail about our customers is stored in our own internal CSP system. Details about company officers, directors, and all the registers can be maintained or printed from this internal system. New company incorporation information, annual compliance, tax filing, company changes, appointment of new directors, changes in the shareholding, issue of new shares, and transfer of shares can also be managed in this system.
Our own internal CSP system guarantees the following benefits:
Epica Consulting Pte Ltd was founded by veterans in the industry of corporate secretarial. The team has been working in the industry for many years. As a practice, the team sold its own corporate secretarial business to a large group in Singapore, which was backed by a venture capital firm. It is safe to say that our founders had a good background and an outstanding experience in the corporate secretarial sector in Singapore.
There are more reasons to choose Epica Consulting Pte Ltd as your corporate incorporation agent. These are:
Epica Consulting Pte Ltd is one of the best corporate secretarial firms in Singapore. You can trust us to be your company incorporation service provider in Singapore. We offer a wide variety of company incorporation packages that can provide you with all the necessary assistance to get your business registered and running in an hour’s time. Our services include company formation, payroll, tax, accounting, and immigration at an outstanding value.
We will help you through all the procedures and deliver solutions for all your business needs. Contact us to learn more about our services and to schedule an appointment. We look forward to working with you!
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