In August 2023, Singapore police seized approximately S$3 billion in assets linked to ten foreign nationals who had operated through Singapore bank accounts and corporate structures. Ten convictions followed. Multiple banks received MAS enforcement notices. And the informal rules governing foreign corporate bank account opening in Singapore were permanently rewritten — in ways that no

Every comparison of Singapore private banks for foreign clients ranks them by AUM. DBS is biggest. UBS manages the most internationally. Julius Baer has the most Swiss heritage. These facts are accurate and almost entirely irrelevant to a non-resident HNWI deciding where to put SGD 1.5 to 5 million over the next decade. What actually

MAS Notice 626 runs to 40 pages. Most non-residents who bank in Singapore have never read it. Most articles about Singapore banking compliance paraphrase it in two paragraphs. Neither approach tells you what actually matters: which specific provisions Singapore bank compliance officers apply to non-resident files, how they apply them in practice rather than on

Open a Singapore bank account as a non-resident. Simple enough concept. Except that behind the phrase “account opening process” sit six distinct decision points — gates — where your application can be stopped before it progresses further. Most guides describe what to submit at Gate 4. They rarely mention Gates 1, 2, 3, 5, or

Every article about Singapore private banking leads with the same line: the minimum is SGD 2 million. DBS Private Bank. The number has become shorthand for the entire market. Here is what that line omits. The minimum deposit is the lobby price — what gets you through the front door. Between the lobby and an