The EP application, explained for foreign employers.
An employer's guide to the Singapore Employment Pass and its senior alternatives: what the current salary criteria require, how COMPASS scores an application, and where pass planning fits when a foreign group establishes its Singapore presence. Figures below are from MOM, verified July 2026; the current MOM criteria always govern.
Passes are a setup question, not a form-filling one.
In our client work, pass questions almost never arrive alone. A foreign group incorporates a Singapore entity, and within the same quarter it needs a director or a country manager on the ground. At that point the Employment Pass stops being an HR formality and becomes part of the establishment plan: who moves, on what salary, employed by which entity, and how the arrangement reads alongside the tax residency and substance questions the group is answering at the same time.
This page is the plain-language version of the rules as they stand. The definitive source is always the Ministry of Manpower, and the criteria change on published schedules, so treat this as orientation rather than authority. The deeper decision-path content lives in the two guides this hub feeds: EP eligibility and salary, and ONE Pass and Tech.Pass.
Three readers use this hub in practice. The HQ director planning to send a trusted manager to run the new subsidiary, who needs the salary arithmetic before making an internal offer. The HR lead asked to "sort out the visa" and discovering that the employer's own profile is now half the assessment. And the founder or principal weighing whether their own move should run through the EP at all, or through one of the senior passes above it. The sections below are ordered for all three, starting with the figures every one of them needs first.
What the EP currently requires.
Qualifying salary
The Employment Pass carries a minimum qualifying salary that rises progressively with age from 23, so a candidate in their forties needs a materially higher package than the headline figure suggests. The financial services sector carries its own, higher scale. The practical effect of the age banding is that the floor for a seasoned executive sits close to double the entry figure, and budgeting from the headline number alone is the most common planning error we see.
| Applications | All sectors except financial services | Financial services |
|---|---|---|
| Before 1 Jan 2027 | From S$5,600, rising with age to S$10,700 at 45 and above | From S$6,200, rising with age to S$11,800 at 45 and above |
| From 1 Jan 2027 | From S$6,000, rising with age to S$11,500 at 45 and above | From S$6,600, rising with age to S$12,700 at 45 and above |
Source: Ministry of Manpower EP eligibility criteria, verified July 2026. Current MOM criteria govern.
COMPASS
Meeting the salary floor is necessary but no longer sufficient. Since its introduction, MOM's Complementarity Assessment Framework, COMPASS, has scored EP applications on a points basis: an application must earn 40 points to pass. The foundational criteria cover salary against sector benchmarks, qualifications, the diversity of the employer's workforce, and the employer's support for local employment, with bonus criteria available for shortage occupations and strategic economic priorities.
The practical consequence for a newly incorporated subsidiary is that the employer's own profile now matters as much as the candidate's. A new entity with no local workforce history should look at its COMPASS position before it drafts an offer letter, not after a rejection. The scoring detail, including how the criteria interact for a first hire, is worked through in our eligibility and salary guide.
Senior alternatives: ONE Pass and Tech.Pass
For senior movers, the Overseas Networks and Expertise Pass sits above the EP. It requires a fixed monthly salary of at least S$30,000, earned over the twelve consecutive months before the application from an established employer, or committed by a Singapore-based employer for a role starting within six months, with an alternative route for outstanding achievement in sport, arts and culture, or academia and research. Where the qualifying salary is drawn from a past overseas employer, that employer must be established, with a market capitalisation of at least US$500 million or annual revenue of at least US$200 million.
Tech.Pass serves comparable seniority in the technology sector under its own published criteria. The full comparison between the two passes, and when either beats a well-structured EP, is covered in our ONE Pass and Tech.Pass guide.
Renewals follow the published schedules
The current salary scales apply to new applications before 1 January 2027 and to renewals of passes expiring before 1 January 2028; the higher scales apply to new applications from 1 January 2027 and to renewals of passes expiring from 1 January 2028. The practical point for employers is that a pass granted today is renewed against the criteria in force at renewal, not the ones in force at grant, so a package set exactly at the floor has a shorter shelf life than it appears to.
Planning a first Singapore hire, in the right order.
Start with who, not with the form
The instinct is to pick the person and then check the criteria. The better order is to model the criteria against the two or three realistic candidates first, because the age-banded salary scale changes the arithmetic materially between a 28-year-old and a 47-year-old, and the difference can be several thousand dollars a month of committed cost, every month, for the life of the pass.
Score the employer before the candidate
COMPASS scores the application, and the application belongs to the employer. A newly incorporated Singapore subsidiary has no local employment history, which affects its position on the workforce-profile criteria, and that is knowable in advance. Employers who assess their own COMPASS position before drafting the offer letter avoid the most avoidable rejection: a strong candidate attached to an unprepared employer profile.
Decide the pass before the package
For senior movers the EP is not automatically the right instrument. A group principal earning above the ONE Pass line may be better served by it; a technology leader may fit Tech.Pass. The pass type shapes the employment contract, the entity that employs, and the flexibility the individual has afterwards, so it belongs in the plan before compensation is finalised, not after.
Fit the timeline to the incorporation, not the other way round
Pass planning usually runs alongside entity setup, banking, and the first accounting registrations. Sequencing them together avoids the familiar stall: an entity that exists on paper but cannot yet employ, or a candidate ready to move with no employing entity in place. This is where the pass question rejoins the establishment work Medora runs for foreign-owned groups, and why we prefer to see the whole timeline rather than the pass in isolation.
Keep the paperwork consistent, because everything cross-checks
The employer controls more of the application's credibility than it tends to realise. The role described in the application should match the employment contract, the salary in the contract should match what the payroll then pays, and the entity's own records, its ACRA filings, its accounts, its declared activity, should describe the same business the application describes. Inconsistency between these documents is self-inflicted, and it is the kind of thing that surfaces awkwardly at renewal even when the original application succeeds.
The same consistency test applies over time. Salaries declared for pass purposes flow into the entity's cost base, its transfer pricing arrangements, and its financial statements, so a package designed only to clear a threshold, without regard to what the group's intercompany model says the Singapore entity can afford, buys a pass and creates a tax question. Designing the two together costs nothing extra and avoids the contradiction.
The pass is one line in a larger setup.
The pass decision interacts with questions Medora works on daily for foreign-owned groups. The salary that clears the EP threshold is also a cost in the transfer pricing arrangements between subsidiary and parent. The executive who moves may shift where management and control of an entity sits, which bears on tax residency. The employing entity's structure decides who carries the employment cost, and the group's audit and reporting obligations follow from all of it.
So while the Ministry of Manpower's process is the applicant's own, the surrounding decisions benefit from the same advisers who handle the group's tax position and audit and reporting. Clients establishing a Singapore presence raise pass planning with us as part of that wider conversation, and that is the context in which we are most useful on it.
Seen from the group's side, the pass is also a cost decision with a long tail. The qualifying salary is a committed monthly outgoing for the life of the pass, it rises at renewal as the criteria move, and it lands in the Singapore entity's accounts whether or not the entity's revenue has caught up with its headcount. Groups that model that cost across three years, rather than at the moment of application, make calmer decisions about who moves and when.
If your group is at that stage, speak with a partner about the establishment plan as a whole.