Corporate secretarial services

• Maintains the statutory registers — members, directors, charges, and the Register of Registrable Controllers (RORC) under the Companies Act, with central electronic transmission to ACRA from 30 July 2020.
• Files the Annual Return with ACRA within seven months of financial year end (private companies, since 2018) and the Estimated Chargeable Income with IRAS within three months of FYE.
• Convenes and minutes board meetings, AGMs, and EGMs. For private companies eligible to dispense with AGMs under Companies Act s.175A — financial statements sent to members within five months of FYE and no member requesting an AGM — prepares the supporting filings and safeguards.
• Prepares directors' resolutions for share issues, transfers, dividend declarations, banking mandate changes, director and officer changes.
• Acts as the company's named point of contact with ACRA for filings, clarifications, and ad-hoc compliance correspondence.
• Updates BizFile records within the prescribed window when directors, shareholders, registered office, or constitution changes occur.

The compliance cadence is unforgiving. Late Annual Returns trigger ACRA composition sums (currently from S$300 for late AR lodgement) and flag the company in subsequent regulatory dealings; persistent late filing exposes directors to debarment under Companies Act s.155 (5-year debarment after three relevant offences within five years). Inaccurate beneficial ownership register entries are a separate compliance breach under the Companies Act regime, with civil and in some cases criminal exposure for directors and the secretary.

Banks, counterparties, and incoming investors increasingly ask to see the full statutory register during diligence. Companies whose secretary maintained registers sloppily fail diligence on points unrelated to the underlying business — registers reconstructed under deal pressure are visibly reconstructed, and they signal a governance posture that affects the deal terms.

We engage on annual retainer covering the full statutory cadence. For groups with multiple Singapore entities — common for family offices, holding structures, and SME group consolidations — we coordinate the calendar across entities so Annual Returns, ECIs, and AGMs are batched efficiently and shared resolutions can run in parallel.

For corporate transactions (financing rounds, M&A, group restructuring), the secretarial workstream runs alongside legal and accounting. Resolutions, share register updates, BizFile changes, and the supporting ACRA filings sit on the critical path of most transactions; sloppy execution on this side delays closings that would otherwise be ready.

Annual Return is not the same as the corporate tax return. The Annual Return is filed with ACRA and confirms the company's registered details, share capital, and members. The corporate tax return (Form C-S for companies meeting the S$5M revenue and other simplified-reporting conditions, or Form C otherwise) is filed with IRAS and reports taxable income. Different regulators, different deadlines, different consequences for missing them.

AGM exemption is conditional, not automatic. Singapore private companies may dispense with AGMs under Companies Act s.175A if financial statements are sent to members within five months of FYE and no member requests an AGM (request must be made at least 14 days before the end of the sixth month after FYE). The exemption is conditional on those statutory tests, not on a unanimous resolution. Companies that quietly skipped AGMs without satisfying the s.175A tests are technically in breach.

The common seal is optional, not required. Since 31 March 2017, Singapore companies are not required to have a common seal. Documents that previously needed sealing can now be executed by signature of an authorised officer. Constitutions still requiring sealing are out of date and worth refreshing during a routine engagement.

ALG provides corporate secretarial services to Singapore Pte Ltd companies across cross-border founder, holding-structure, and family-office contexts. Anlian Group has been operating since 2018; the ACRA Filing Agent licence (FA20200346) was granted in 2020. Specific engagement texture is shared under engagement letter, not on the public site.

Closely related pillars: Singapore Company Incorporation (initial setup; we typically continue as secretary post-incorporation) and Accounting & Tax Planning (ECI, GST, statutory accounts; the secretary's and accountant's calendars interlock).

For incorporated companies looking to migrate from another corporate services firm — most migrations happen between AGM cycles — or for newly incorporated companies needing to appoint a secretary within the six-month window, the conversation tends to be efficient. We confirm scope and timing on a strategy call.

Schedule a Strategy Call → or Request a proposal →