Opening Bank Account for Business in Singapore

Words from the banker

The background story
Since the economic downturn around the world that started last year, banks around the world have tightened their internal compliance and regulation. Singapore is no exception. Most banks in Singapore the business's director and the authorized signatories' physical presence inorder to open an company account with the bank.

When you open an company account with the banks, most banks usually require you to maintain a minimum average balance monthly, else it will probably cost around SGD$15-50 usually if your bank account fall below the minimum average balance. The minimum average balance requirement at OCBC, DBS, UOB and Standard Chartered is $10,000 per month. OCBC has waived the minimum average balance requirement for the first 6 month to only SGD$500 inorder to woo more customers to open account with them.

For some foreign banks like HSBC and Citibank, the minimum average balance may be higher, ranging between SGD$25-50K.

The account opening procedures
The procedures and the requirements for opening an business account is similar across the banks where all bankers are required to do a extensive "KYC" ( Know your client) i.e customer due diligence before opening a bank account for any company, mandated by the MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore).

A list of common questions that the banks are going to ask are;
1. Nature of business
2. brief description of supplier or target customers
3. Where does the source of fund coming from
4. rough estimate of annual turnover
5. Initial deposit amount
6. Size of the transactions
7. Details and background of Principal (director) and beneficiaries
8. Proof of beneficial ownership
9. M&A (Memorandum and Articles)

Approving Procedures
Upon the preparation of the necessary documents, approving procedures may required another internal review by the bank authority or another formal interview with the business owner and the company's directors. During this phase, the approving is really up to the discretion of the banks and they have every right to decline your application without revealing to you the reasons for their action.

This roughly summed up about the opening a company account with the banks.
Hope the above information will be useful to you to be use for reference.

The prices listed above are references from the official website of the respective banks and should not be treated as final. It would be advisable to check the latest rate with the respective banks itself.

From the management of Your Boss Advisors - Banker