Company Registry Spotlight: Singapore

Singapore is a global hub for business and entrepreneurship, with thousands of new companies registered in the city-state every year.

In line with Singapore’s reputation as a modern and highly digitised country, also its company registry is among the easiest to access and most advanced in the world.

Maintained by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), the Singapore register is an electronic database that provides valuable information on all registered companies in Singapore.

As the national regulator of businesses in Singapore, ACRA was first established in 2004 and its main responsibilities are to oversee the registration and regulation of companies and to promote good corporate governance practices.

There are a few ways to access the Singapore Business Register.

The easiest and most convenient method is through the BizFile portal, which provides users with online access to the registry. Users can also access the registry in person at ACRA’s office.

To purchase specific business profiles, users must register and top up an account, which can be done online through the BizFile portal. Finally, users can also access some basic information about a company for free, including its name, registration date, and status.

The Singapore Business Register contains information on several types of companies, including Private companies limited by shares, Public companies limited by shares, Partnerships, and Sole proprietorships.

The types of information and documents available in the database include business profiles, company information (e.g. company name, registration date, status), officers (e.g. directors, secretaries), and shareholders.

Business profiles are the most comprehensive documents available in the registry, providing a detailed overview of a company’s operations, financial performance, and ownership structure. However, it’s important to note that some details may be redacted for privacy reasons.

According to ACRA’s latest statistics, there were 588,764 companies in the Singapore Business Register as of the end of 2023.

In the course of 2023 alone, 70,402 new companies were formed, a 12.3% increase year-on-year.

These numbers reflect the city-state’s commitment to promoting entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as its reputation as a business-friendly destination for newcomers from all over the world.

They also highlight the importance of accessing registry data in real-time to ensure the highest level of compliance and accuracy when verifying business customers for Know Your Business (KYB) and client due diligence purposes. In most cases, information on these newly incorporated companies will not be present in static entity databases, but it will be readily available in the official registry or via platforms like Know Your Customer that exclusively rely on live access to official sources.

To learn about the far-reaching benefits of real-time registry access, click here.

Through Know Your Customer, you can easily streamline and automate access to the Singapore business register and cross-border identification of Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs) via one easy-to-use platform or single API.

Our solution provides a standardised and user-centric experience across company registries in 127 countries worldwide, empowering compliance teams with the most accurate documentation and shareholder data available, sourced in real-time from their official source.

Additionally, our end-to-end digital compliance workflow helps teams manage and monitor compliance processes in line with local and international regulations, making it safer and easier to onboard international customers with complex shareholding structures.