Number of Family Offices Registered in Singapore, Aggregate Business Spending, Amount of Assets under Management and Invested Locally in Last Five Years and Year-to-date

Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis asked the Prime Minister in each of the last five years and year-to-date, what is (i) the number of family offices registered in Singapore (ii) their aggregate business spending (iii) the amount of assets under management (AUM) held and (iv) the amount of their AUM invested locally.

Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam (for the Prime Minister): As Single Family Offices (SFOs) do not manage third party monies, they are not required to be registered or licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). As such, MAS does not have authoritative data on the number of SFOs or the scale of their operations in Singapore.

Based on MAS’ estimates, there were about 400 SFOs as at end-2020 and 700 SFOs as at end-2021. MAS does not have estimates on aggregate business spending, aggregate AUM held and the amount invested locally by SFOs.

For SFOs seeking tax incentives on income derived from their investments managed in Singapore 1 , they are required to meet criteria on business spending, assets under management, and investment professionals hired. With effect from April this year, the requirements under each of these criteria were increased, and a new requirement stipulating that SFOs must make a certain amount of local investments was introduced. Besides these direct contributions, SFOs also generate indirect employment when they work with external finance, tax and legal professionals on wealth planning and operational matters. In addition, they expand the potential pool of capital for purposeful causes such as ESG investments and philanthropic activities. These will increase the positive spillovers to the Singapore economy and enhance the professionalism of the family offices in Singapore.

Note(s) to Question No(s) 4:

1 These are commonly known as Section 13O and 13U schemes under the Income Tax Act.