Singapore’s National Anti-Money Laundering Strategy sets out how the country intends to keep its defences against money laundering current as criminal methods change. Issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (the MAS), with the Ministries of Home Affairs and Finance, it rests on three pillars - prevent, detect and enforce - supported by three building blocks: whole-of-society coordination, the legal and regulatory framework, and international cooperation.
Published in October 2024, the strategy set a direction rather than introducing a single rule. For firms in Singapore’s corporate services and financial sectors, what matters is what it has since required of them, and much of that is now law. The strategy also named the sectors it considers most exposed to money laundering risk, and corporate service providers were among them.
Corporate service providers and the misuse of companies
Corporate service providers sit at a sensitive point in the system. They form companies, provide registered offices and arrange directorships, which makes them useful to legitimate businesses and, on occasion, attractive to those seeking to disguise ownership. The strategy identified the misuse of legal persons as a long-standing area of focus, and the law has since tightened around it.
The Corporate Service Providers Act 2024 came into force on 9 June 2025. It requires any business providing corporate services in or from Singapore to register with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), whether or not it files transactions on clients’ behalf. Registered providers must meet anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing and counter-proliferation financing obligations. Breaches can carry fines of up to S$100,000, and senior management can be held liable in defined circumstances. Anyone acting as a nominee director by way of business must now be arranged through a registered provider that has assessed them as fit and proper.
The Companies and Limited Liability Partnerships (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act 2024 took effect a week later, on 16 June 2025. From that date, ACRA maintains central registers of nominee directors and nominee shareholders. Nominee status is publicly visible on a company’s business profile, while the identities of nominators are reserved for the authorities. New companies must keep a register of controllers from incorporation and verify the information each year. The maximum fine for register-related offences rose to S$25,000.
For businesses that use corporate services rather than provide them, the practical effect is more documentation and closer questioning at onboarding. Providers now have to ask for fuller beneficial ownership detail; it is an obligation they cannot waive, not friction for its own sake. Conversely, your business will only be able to operate smoothly in the longer term, if your corporate service provider properly takes care of these obligations.
What this asks of financial institutions
The detect pillar speaks more directly to financial institutions. Singapore has widened information sharing between government agencies and, through COSMIC, between banks themselves, allowing participating institutions to flag customers whose behaviour shows recognised indicators of suspicion. The MAS continues to publish guidance papers setting out its supervisory expectations, particularly on customer due diligence, source of funds and source of wealth checks, and the prompt filing of suspicious transaction reports.
For boutique and mid-sized institutions such as fund managers, payment firms and advisers, the supervisory bar is the same as it is for the banks, even where the in-house resource is not. That gap is where most remediation work starts: a risk assessment that is current, policies that match what the firm actually does, and screening and monitoring that hold up to inspection.
Where Alpadis fits
This is the work Alpadis supports in Singapore. Our Corporate Services team handles company formation, secretarial duties, directorship and nominee services, and the register-keeping the new rules require, as a registered corporate service provider. Our Regulatory Services division advises financial institutions on AML/CFT frameworks, MAS licensing, customer onboarding and independent internal audit. The common thread is governance: structures and controls that satisfy a regulator and continue to do so as the business grows.
Singapore’s standing as a financial centre rests in part on being a difficult place to launder money. The National AML Strategy set that direction, and the legislation of 2025 gave it effect. Firms that adjust early tend to find that compliance settles into routine rather than disruption.
