Setting up a trust in Singapore: steps and documents

Before you start: what you decide

Four choices are yours alone, and a rough answer to each makes the first call far more useful:

• Purpose. Keeping a family company together, preparing succession, providing for children, holding a family office vehicle, or a mix.
• Assets. Cash, listed securities, shares in private companies, property or insurance policies, and where each one sits.
• Beneficiaries. A named list, a class such as “my descendants”, or both.
• Control. Whether you want to keep investment powers, appoint a protector, or set up a private trust company to act as trustee.

None of these choices is final at this stage. They give the partner trustee and the lawyer enough to propose a structure, and they show early which assets need advice in another country.

For the main structure options, start with the overview of trusts in Singapore.

Step by step: from enquiry to signed deed

Six steps run in the same order for nearly every family. The time each one takes varies, mostly because of documents and outside parties.

1. Enquiry. Share your family situation, your assets and what the trust is for. We send back the questions that apply and a document list.
2. Identity checks. We verify who you are and where the wealth came from. The partner trustee reviews the file before it accepts you.
3. Structure design. We, the partner trustee, the law firm and your tax adviser agree what the trust holds, who benefits and who has which powers.
4. Drafting. The law firm drafts the deed and helps with your letter of wishes. You review both with your own lawyer.
5. Signing. You sign the deed, and the trust company accepts office by resolution. The law firm confirms the signing formalities.
6. Funding. Once the trust account is open at the bank, the assets are transferred one by one into the trustee’s name.

Carrying on trust business in Singapore is restricted, with a list of exempt persons (source: Singapore Statutes Online, Trust Companies Act 2005, sections 3 and 15).

In our service a partner trust company takes the trustee role; its name and role are set out in your documents before you sign.

Gathering identity papers early saves the most time. The bank also runs its own checks before each asset moves, so a few questions arrive twice.

Who charges for which step is listed in the cost guide.

Documents the trustee asks for

Three kinds of paper are needed: proof of identity, evidence of where the money and wealth came from, and the details that go into the deed.

Basis: the document checklist used at onboarding, dated 2026-11-05.

A document not in English normally needs a certified translation. If one is old or hard to obtain, say so early, because another route to the same fact often exists.

Identity and source-of-funds checks

Nothing else moves until these checks are done. We identify the settlor, the protector and anyone else controlling the trust, and verify each person.

The trustee must also understand the source of the funds and how the wider wealth was built.

When we cannot meet you in person, we add at least one further step to confirm your identity.

That step might be a second set of identity documents, extra checks on what you told us, or a first payment from an account in your own name.

Which steps apply is the trustee’s call, and it records them.

Where beneficiaries are named only as a class, the trustee collects enough to identify each person when a distribution is made.

A senior public role, held now or before, by you or anyone connected with the trust leads to enhanced checks, and a senior manager approves the relationship before it begins.

After the trust is set up

With the assets in, routine administration begins. Trustee meetings are held when a decision is needed, minutes and accounts are kept, and identity checks are renewed on a risk-based schedule.

The Trustees Act 1967 sets a statutory duty of care for trustees and rules for their investment and general powers (source: Singapore Statutes Online, Trustees Act 1967).

Tax residence self-certifications are collected by the trustee from the settlor, the protector, the beneficiaries and other controlling persons.

Singapore has exchanged financial account information under the Common Reporting Standard since September 2018 (source: Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, CRS overview and latest developments).

Your adviser confirms at set-up how the trust is classified, which decides whether it reports and what it reports.

The letter of wishes can be updated whenever you like; changes to beneficiaries follow the deed’s own rules for adding or removing them.

The legal features of Singapore trusts set out which powers the law lets you keep; the frequently asked questions cover the remainder.

Once the purpose and the assets are roughly clear, ask us for a quote and the next questions follow.