Single family offices in Singapore grew from about 1,400 at the end of 2023 to more than 2,000 at the end of 2024. By late August 2025 the regulator had a reputation to manage: it needed to move fast enough to compete for families, and carefully enough to protect Singapore's standing after the 2023 money-laundering case.
Trade press reported on 22 August 2025 that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) had committed to decide applications for family-office tax incentives within about three months, down from about a year in late 2023.
The same reporting describes the other side of the bargain: a thorough source-of-wealth file, in some cases reportedly covering up to 50 years.
Speed is available to the family that arrives with a finished file. For everyone else, the clock starts later.
What the incentives are
Singapore's fund tax-incentive schemes for single family offices, commonly referred to by their section numbers, 13O and 13U, exempt specified income of qualifying funds. Under the conditions that have applied to single-family-office funds since 5 July 2023, the minimum assets under management in designated investments at the time of application are S$20 million for 13O and S$50 million for 13U. The tax treatment depends on the structure and on meeting conditions each year, including substance in Singapore.
What a fast approval needs
The regulator can only decide quickly if it can understand the family and the money. The file that supports an application, and the later conversation with a bank, usually covers:
- Who the family is, the ultimate beneficial owners, and how they are related.
- How the wealth was created: a timeline of businesses, sales, inheritances and investments, with documents.
- How it reached Singapore: the path of the money from source to the vehicle, with bank records.
- Who runs the office: the investment professionals, their roles and how decisions are made.
- What the structure does and why, in plain language.
The fundamentals
Governance comes before assets. A family office is an organization that makes decisions about a family's wealth. Who decides, on what authority, within what written policy, and who can overrule them, matters more to long-term results than the first year's investment return.
Write the investment policy. An investment policy statement sets the objectives, constraints, allowed asset classes, limits and rebalancing rules of the portfolio. It also gives the regulator and the bank a clear picture of what the structure is for.
Cost must match scale. A dedicated office has fixed costs: people, premises, compliance. Below a certain size, those costs consume too much of the return. Check the break-even before the structure, not after.
Records are the product. An office that can produce any transaction, any year, any document on request earns trust. One that cannot is difficult to approve, bank or audit.
Practical implications
- Start the source-of-wealth timeline first, before choosing a structure. See source of wealth is the new net worth.
- Collect documents by event, not by account: sale agreements, company filings, probate, gift deeds, tax filings.
- Decide who the investment professionals are and what they are accountable for.
- Write the investment policy in a few pages, and keep it current.
- Model the full cost of the office against the assets before applying.
- Treat consistency as part of the file. The same story, told to the regulator, banks and advisers, with the same facts.
Update, October 2026: what the following year added
Correction, 12 October 2026. An earlier version of this post gave S$5 million as the 13O threshold, citing law-firm summaries of an October 2024 circular. That figure applies to funds managed by licensed fund managers, not to family-office funds; for family-office funds the 13O threshold was, and remains, S$20 million.
In a speech on 29 September 2025, MAS's Deputy Chairman said most new applications were being approved within three months. MAS then reset the conditions for single-family-office funds in a circular dated 31 July 2026, effective 1 August 2026. Assets are now tested at application and at each financial year-end; an office can apply one investment professional short and complete the team within its first year; minimum local spending is S$200,000, S$500,000 or S$1 million depending on assets at year-end; and the local investment requirement is measured at year-end, with some holdings, including equities on approved exchanges, counting double. Our guide Keeping Your 13O or 13U Incentive in Force covers the new conditions year by year.
What we could not confirm
The body of this post reflects what was known on 2 September 2025; later developments are in the update section. At the time, the three-month commitment and the 50-year documentation expectation came from trade-press reports of practitioner commentary; MAS later confirmed the three-month figure in a speech (see the update), but we have not found an official statement of the 50-year expectation. The October 2024 circular is known to us only through law-firm summaries. This is education, not legal or tax advice.
Sources
- Hubbis, What practitioners should know about Singapore's new 3-month family office tax incentive approval regime (22 August 2025)
- Asia Asset Management, Single family offices double in 2024 (16 January 2025)
- DLA Piper, Amendments to the Singapore fund tax incentive schemes (October 2024)
- Monetary Authority of Singapore, Speech by the Deputy Chairman at the WMI Global-Asia Family Office Summit (29 September 2025)
- Monetary Authority of Singapore, Tax Incentive Schemes for Funds, FDD Cir 05/2026 (31 July 2026)
- Baker McKenzie, Singapore tax incentives changes for funds and family offices (August 2026)