Why Choose Compliance?

Compliance is now viewed as an integral part of the business, partly due to:
- proactively involved in control frameworks, decision making, training, product
design etc.
- recognition within firms that Compliance must be one of the first ports of cal
l.
- Challenging and genuinely rewarding area of work. The firm will not always lis
ten and compliance officers will have to advise and step back. Nonetheless, Comp
liance positively influences many key decisions affecting firms as a whole, or e
ven just a single customer.
What do employers look for?
Effective Compliance professionals will possess a combination of experience, rel
evant qualifications that enhance capabilities, and a good attitude and aptitude
:
A candidate must understand the regulatory and legal environment in which the fi
rm operates. This becomes more crucial the more senior the role.
A candidate must be able to help a firm mitigate their compliance risks and must
understand what those risks are.
A candidate must understand the external governance frameworks that are in place
and why the external operating environment is formed as it is.
A successful Compliance professional requires a broad suite of personal skills i
n order to be able to perform the role successfully.
A successful Compliance professional needs to understand the business; commercia
lity is a reality of Compliance.
Compliance professionals should always be determined to embed and develop good p
ractice and an ethical culture of responsibility, but must also be commercially
aware, understanding the nature of the business that they are involved in.

Company Secretary
Each Singapore company must appoint a local company secretary. The company secre
tary must have the requisite knowledge and experience to discharge the functions
of a company secretary.
Registered Address
Each Singapore company must have a registered office in Singapore which must be
open and accessible to the public during normal office hours.
Financial Year End
Each Singapore company must fix its financial year end (FYE). If the company is
a subsidiary company, its FYE must coincide with the financial year end of the h
olding company. Otherwise the choice of the company s FYE date is left for the com
pany to decide.
Appointment of Auditors
Each Singapore company shall appoint an auditor within 3 months from the date of
incorporation, unless it is exempted from audit requirements. To be exempt from
audit requirement, a company must satisfy all of the following:
All shareholders must be individuals;
Total number of shareholders must be less than 20;
Annual turnover of the company must be less than S$5 million.

FATCA will require banks and other entities to ascertain which clients are subje
ct to the U.S. tax system, to ask them to sign a W-9 form making their account t
ransparent to the IRS and a waiver of domestic bank secrecy or confidentiality r
ules, and to begin in 2014 to share data with the IRS regarding their assets. See more at: http://sbr.com.sg/financial-services/commentary/here-are-implicatio
ns-singapores-move-fatca-compliance#sthash.wa4bMyoX.dpuf