Family office advisory in Singapore, structured to hold.
Section 13O and 13U incentives, single family office setup, and VCC structuring, delivered by a partner-led Singapore practice established in 1978. Medora advises families whose wealth has corporate roots in the UK, US, EU, Japan, and Korea, and builds structures designed for the second generation, not just the first application.
Why families structure through Singapore.
Families in this position rarely start with a tax question. They start with an operating business sold or about to be sold, wealth spread across three or four jurisdictions, and children who live somewhere other than where the money was made. Singapore answers that situation with a rare combination: a credible legal system, a regulator in MAS that publishes clear conditions and applies them consistently, an extensive set of tax treaties, and a professional infrastructure that can actually run the resulting structure year after year.
The practice is built for first-generation wealth with corporate roots: principals whose fortunes were built through companies headquartered in the UK, US, EU, Japan, or Korea, and who now need the discipline of a corporate group applied to a family balance sheet. That corporate origin shapes the advice, because the family's holding companies, the operating business, and the new fund structure have to be read as one system, not three.
The published incentive framework matters, and the sections below set it out. But the incentive is the entry ticket, not the structure. What determines whether a family office works over a decade is the quality of its design: how the fund vehicle, the management entity, and the family's existing holding companies fit together, who controls what, and whether the reporting obligations were understood before the first filing deadline arrived rather than after.
That design work is where an accounting practice earns its place. Medora's family office work draws on the same bench that runs the firm's audit and assurance practice and tax advisory practice, which means the structure that is recommended is one the firm is prepared to account for, audit-ready, in the years that follow.
It is also worth naming what Medora is not, because the family office market is crowded with parties selling their own products. The firm does not manage money, sell investments, or take custody of assets. Its interest is the structure: that it is designed soundly, approved properly, and run cleanly. Families tend to value that separation more with each year the structure operates, because the adviser reviewing the numbers has no stake in what the numbers say.
Section 13O and 13U, read properly.
Sections 13O and 13U of the Income Tax Act are the fund tax incentive schemes most relevant to funds managed by single family offices. Under both, specified income from designated investments is exempt from Singapore tax, provided the conditions are met at the point of application and maintained throughout the incentive period. The conditions differ in scale and in expectation.
Read plainly, the two schemes describe two sizes of ambition. 13O suits a family bringing a substantial but focused pool to Singapore with a lean professional team. 13U assumes something closer to an institution: a larger pool, a deeper team, and correspondingly more regulatory weight. Families near the boundary should choose on trajectory rather than on the current balance sheet, because the structure will outlive the number that qualified it.
| Condition | Section 13O | Section 13U |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum designated investments | S$20 million | S$50 million |
| Investment professionals | Minimum 2, at least 1 not a family member | Minimum 3, at least 1 not a family member |
| Local business spending | Tiered requirement, from S$200,000 | |
| Banking | Private banking account with a MAS-licensed financial institution | |
| Duration of conditions | At the point of application and throughout the incentive period | |
Source: MAS published conditions for the fund tax incentive schemes for family offices, verified July 2026. Conditions change; the current MAS conditions govern.
What the table does not tell you
The conditions above are the published floor. The judgement calls sit underneath them: what counts as designated investments for this family's asset mix, whether a family member genuinely performing an investment role should be one of the counted professionals, how the local business spending requirement interacts with what the family would spend anyway, and whether 13O now with a move to 13U later serves the family better than waiting. These are questions of fact and structure, and they are answered properly on the family's numbers, not in the abstract.
Two things we hold to. First, incentive conditions are regulatory facts that change; a structure should be built to remain sensible if the thresholds move again. Second, compliance with the conditions is a continuing obligation, so the annual discipline of evidencing them belongs in the design from day one. The detailed scheme comparison, including how Section 13D fits alongside, sits in our guide to the 13O and 13U incentives.
The incentive landscape also extends past investment returns: MAS operates a philanthropy tax incentive scheme for family offices, which matters to families for whom giving is part of the office's purpose rather than a footnote to it. Where philanthropy belongs in the design, it should be in the conversation from the start.
From term sheet to operating family office.
Single family office setup
A Singapore single family office typically pairs two entities: a fund vehicle holding the family's investible assets, and a management entity, the SFO itself, employing the investment professionals who manage them. Around that core sit the family's existing holding companies, trusts, and operating interests, which rarely arrive in a tidy state. The setup work runs from entity design and incorporation through the MAS application, the banking relationship, and the employment arrangements for the investment team, to the accounting and reporting calendar the structure will live by. Our single family office setup page describes the end-to-end sequence.
VCC structuring
The Variable Capital Company, launched by MAS and ACRA in January 2020, has become a serious option for family structures. A VCC permits flexible issue and redemption of shares, can pay dividends from capital, and can be established as an umbrella with segregated sub-funds, which lets a family separate strategies, generations, or branches inside one administrative shell. An umbrella VCC files a single corporate income tax return with IRAS regardless of its number of sub-funds.
The honest caveat is that flexibility is not free: a VCC brings its own governance, servicing, and reporting apparatus, and for some families a conventional fund company remains the quieter instrument. Whether a VCC beats the alternative for a given family depends on the asset mix and governance intentions; the trade-offs, including conversion from existing structures, are set out on our VCC structuring page.
Ongoing administration and reporting
Once the incentive is awarded, the structure has to keep earning it: conditions evidenced annually, accounts prepared, filings made, and the compliance position maintained with both MAS and IRAS. This is the unglamorous half of family office work and the half most often underestimated. The firm's audit bench includes direct experience of compliance work for fund management companies, covering AML and CFT arrangements, compliance arrangements, risk management frameworks, internal controls, and reports for MAS reporting, alongside the statutory accounting and audit obligations of the entities themselves.
The sequence, in practice
An establishment engagement usually runs in four movements. Design first: the entity map, the incentive route, the banking strategy, and the reporting calendar, agreed on paper before anything is incorporated. Then formation: entities incorporated, the investment team's employment arrangements settled, and the private banking relationship opened. Then the application: prepared, evidenced, and submitted to MAS, with the family's profile and the fund's structure presented as the regulator expects to see them. Then the operating rhythm: the first year's accounting, filings, and condition evidence set up as a calendar the family can actually keep.
The order matters. Families who incorporate first and design afterwards tend to buy themselves a restructuring exercise within the first two years, at precisely the moment they wanted the structure to disappear into the background.
Design questions that decide the decade.
The application gets the attention; the design determines whether the family is still pleased with the structure in year eight. Four questions do most of the work.
Who decides, and who merely benefits?
Control and benefit are different things, and structures that blur them store up conflict. The design should state plainly who directs the investments, who can change the investment policy, who appoints and removes the professionals, and what the next generation's role is before they inherit the decisions. These are governance questions, but they surface as accounting ones: the entity that controls is not always the entity that should hold.
What does the second generation inherit, structurally?
A family office designed around one principal ages badly. Succession thinking belongs in the entity design: whether branches of the family need separation, how a future division of assets would actually execute, and whether the structure can admit a new generation of decision-makers without being rebuilt. An umbrella arrangement with segregated sub-funds is one tool for this; it is not the only one, and it is not always the right one.
Where does the operating business fit?
Many families are not liquid; they are concentrated in a business that is still running. The interface between the operating company and the family office, dividends, disposals, security, and the treatment of business assets against the incentive conditions, is where design earns its fee. This is also where Medora's corporate side, from valuations and due diligence to audit, works in the same file as the family office team.
What must be true every year?
Every condition attached to the structure, incentive conditions, banking covenants, audit obligations, filing deadlines, becomes an annual fact that someone must evidence. The design should end with a one-page annual calendar naming each obligation and its owner. If that page cannot be written, the structure is not finished.
Partner-led, with the credentials in print.
Family office structures concentrate a family's affairs into a small number of entities, so the seniority of the people advising on them is not a nicety. Medora's family office work is led from the top of the firm, with the tax and compliance depth beneath it drawn from the same named team, whose credentials are published rather than implied.
Xerxes J. Medora
Leads the firm's family office practice. Fellow of ICAEW and of the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants, with cross-border structuring, valuation, and assurance experience spanning investment holding and investment management entities. Holds appointments across the DFK International and LEA Global associations, including as LEA Global Asia Pacific chairman since 2026.
He is supported by the head of the tax department, with more than 30 years of international tax experience, and by a senior manager who conducts compliance audits for fund management companies, including reports for MAS.
Family office questions, answered straight.
What is a family office in Singapore?
A family office is a private structure that manages the wealth of a single family: its investments, its holding entities, and the administration around them. In Singapore the arrangement typically pairs a fund vehicle that holds the family's investible assets with a management entity, the single family office, that employs the professionals who manage them.
The structure exists to give the family institutional-grade management, governance, and continuity across generations.
What is the difference between Section 13O and Section 13U?
Both are Singapore fund tax incentive schemes under which specified income from designated investments is exempt from tax, and both are available to funds managed by single family offices subject to MAS conditions. Under current published MAS conditions, Section 13O requires a minimum of S$20 million in designated investments at the point of application and throughout the incentive period, with at least two investment professionals of whom at least one is not a family member. Section 13U requires a minimum of S$50 million and at least three investment professionals, of whom at least one is not a family member.
Both schemes carry tiered local business spending requirements starting at S$200,000 and require a private banking account with a MAS-licensed financial institution. Conditions change; the current MAS conditions govern any application.
How much money do you need to set up a family office in Singapore?
There is no legal minimum to establish a family office structure itself. The economics are driven by the tax incentives: under current MAS conditions the Section 13O scheme requires at least S$20 million in designated investments, and Section 13U requires at least S$50 million, in each case at the point of application and maintained throughout the incentive period.
Families below those levels can still hold and manage assets through Singapore structures, but without the fund tax incentives the case needs to be argued on other grounds.
What is a VCC and when is it used?
The Variable Capital Company is a Singapore corporate structure for investment funds, launched by MAS and ACRA in January 2020. It permits flexible issue and redemption of shares and payment of dividends from capital, and it can be set up as a standalone fund or as an umbrella with segregated sub-funds.
For family offices, an umbrella VCC can hold distinct investment strategies or family branches in separate sub-funds while consolidating administration, and an umbrella VCC files a single corporate income tax return with IRAS regardless of the number of sub-funds.
Do I need to hire investment professionals for a Singapore family office?
Yes, if the fund is to hold a Section 13O or 13U incentive. Under current published MAS conditions, Section 13O requires a minimum of two investment professionals and Section 13U a minimum of three, and in each case at least one must not be a family member of the beneficial owners. The requirement applies at the point of application and throughout the incentive period.
Family members who genuinely perform investment roles can count within the balance of the team.
How does the 13O or 13U application process work?
In outline: the structure is designed, the entities are incorporated, the banking relationship is established, and an application setting out the fund structure, the investment professionals, and the family's profile is prepared and submitted to MAS. MAS reviews the application against the published conditions before awarding the incentive.
Timelines vary with the completeness of the application and the profile of the family, so the practical discipline is to submit a complete, well-evidenced application the first time.
Do relocating family members need employment passes?
Family members who move to Singapore to work in the structure, for instance as investment professionals employed by the single family office, need the appropriate pass from the Ministry of Manpower, assessed against the criteria in force at the time. Pass planning therefore belongs inside the establishment timetable rather than after it, particularly where a family member is intended to count within the incentive's investment professional requirement.
The current pass criteria, including salary scales and the points-based COMPASS assessment, are set out in our EP and immigration hub.
Does a Singapore family office fund need an audit?
It depends on the structure and the conditions attached to it. Fund vehicles and holding entities may have statutory audit obligations under Singapore company law depending on how they qualify against the audit exemption criteria, and incentive conditions and banking arrangements can add reporting and compliance requirements of their own.
Because Medora is an audit practice as well as an advisory one, the reporting obligations are identified at design rather than discovered afterwards, and the entity that needs an audit knows it from its first year rather than its first missed deadline.