“In the next phase of growth, we seek to position Singapore as a full-service Asian hub for fund management and domiciliation under the Industry Transformation Map (ITM) for Financial Services. This will allow Singapore to capture a greater share of the fund management and fund domiciliation value chain, and will provide new business collaboration and job opportunities within the funds ecosystem,” says Gillian Tan, executive director, financial markets development department, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
Picture this: A tropical island where its citizens have one of the highest stand-ards of living and also one of the highest per capita GDPs globally; is politically stable, has the highest sovereign rating globally of AAA from the three major ratings agencies, and now has a new fund structure that makes its wealth management hub as at-tractive as jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands (BVI) and Luxembourg but without the downsides.
In 2018, the Singapore parliament passed the Variable Capital Companies (VCC) Act (see sidebar), a more flexible corporate structure for funds to be domiciled in Singapore, and the VCC was launched in January this year. The VCC Act serves to position Singapore as an even more viable wealth management hub for the 21st century.
