Yes. It’s official. Our latest jurisdiction has just been launched and we are more than excited to announce our newest add to Smart Companies – welcome onboard Singapore! 

 

Continuously ranked as one of the best places to do business and having recently climbed to the top as the new no.1 in the Global Competitiveness Report 2019 by the World Economic Forum, Singapore proudly carries badges such as macroeconomic stability, infrastructure, labor market and innovation. 

Indeed, this Southeastern economy is no stranger to being also characterized with advantages such as robust economy, established capital and financial markets, territorial tax regime, high productivity as well as high quality of life. 

On top of that, a staggering number of 634 cryptocurrency or blockchain companies are incorporated in Singapore, contributing to the space with the combined market cap of approximately US$8.3 Billion. The government of Singapore isn’t shying away from this either. With its neighboring countries holding a more conservative stand, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has shown support to the industry by initiating multiple programs and blockchain-friendly regulations. So ahoy all blockchain enthusiasts out there – there’s no doubt we are tapping into one of the hotbeds in the space here. 

 

Smart Companies in Singapore are Private Limited Companies – on the blockchain 

If you’ve been following us for a while already, I’m sure you already know how our model is different from traditional companies. 

Smart Companies in Singapore fall under the governing law of Private Limited Companies (Pte. Ltd.). This provides full legal compliance, just like all the jurisdictions we operate in, while all essential transactions of corporate governance happen on Ethereum blockchain. 

The benefits?

A paperless, secure and immutable set of intelligence to help you govern your work of art, your business. 

Smart Companies run differently 

The number one thing is to remember that we are different. We aren’t your average incorporation agent that will run a paperless company set up for you, no no. It’s everything that comes after the incorporation, which is where all the ups and the downs happen. 

 

There’s a lot of talk about how easy it is to incorporate a company but not enough transparency, discussion or infrastructure about the most important phase, that is, everything that happens after.

 

Setting up a company in Singapore is not difficult. You’ll get the basic info from any agent you talk to. From mandatory accounting to nominee directors, we have you covered (learn more about this).  

However, after your company incorporation is when you’ll start seeing how the Smart Company model will level you up. Let’s run through a few scenarios to elaborate what we’re talking about.

 

Scenario #1: Transferring shares to your new business partner 

You’ve finally met a person who’s just as interested about your business as you, and you’ve both agreed to bring her in as a co-founder. Congrats! Big move. You’re both buried under work trying to build your startup but first, you need to take care of the legal work. Shares, stock, equity – whatever you like to call it, they represent your ownership of the company and now need to be transferred. 

In Singapore, to transfer the shares of a Private Limited Company, this is what you’re lawfully required to do: 

1. Prepare Directors Resolution (i.e. contract between transferring parties) 
2. Check restrictions (pre-emptive rights, board approval etc.)
3. Instrument of Transfer + witness 
4. Payment of stamp duty  
5. Surrender of Share Certificate 
6. Submit notice and update electronic register of members by ACRA 
7. Issue new Share Certificate 

Looks like a maze, doesn’t it? It is. 

Here’s how Smart Companies do the same thing: 

1. Prepare Directors Resolution 
2. Go to your company’s dedicated dashboard and click ‘transfer shares’ to the right shareholder.
3. Pay stamp duty and wait for the submission to be approved.

Voila! Done. 

Automated generation, upload and storage of legal documents

Track your events in real-time and watch the dashboard automatically generate all the legal documents needed with your electronic signatures on it. It’s really that simple. 

The magic happens in the background. Behind the scenes, your transaction is executed by smart contracts with built-in compliance, streamlines all the traditional steps into just a few clicks, stores the data in the smart escrow for the official Registrar approval and releases the execution once it’s done.

Transferring shares the traditional way will easily eat up multiple weeks and cost on average S$250-450 per transfer per shareholder + stamp duty. With Smart Companies this will cost you $0.002/share + $0.2 per transfer + stamp duty. Keep your money, I’m sure you’ll find better things to do with it than handling logistics. 

 

Scenario #2: Decision making with a globally distributed team

The world is more connected than ever. This means, you ‘re smoothly operating across multiple continents both personally and professionally, working with a core team you’ve managed to built all over the globe. Geographic dispersion with more than 24 time zones. 

Yum, this is all beautiful – until you have to face the mundane, mandatory, and the not-so-digital-things such as the Annual Shareholders Meeting or the Board resolution. The first is mandatory to have to comply with Singapore’s corporate law. And while the latter isn’t mandatory per se, things as simple as opening a corporate bank account may already require a formal resolution from the board.

And so there you go, spending your time or resources on hiring someone to handle the logistics. Flying your directors in and conducting votes with traditional hand raises. Now, don’t get me wrong – physical meetings can be imperative in building company culture, mutual trust and rapport with each other. All key elements of healthy corporate governance.

But in the Age of Internet, we also believe in having options. 

An Alternative Way

And this is what Smart Companies offer, exactly that. Alternative ways of doing things, even in the middle of the night when everyone else is sleeping. Say, your company operates on a standard 50% approval model on ordinary votes. Your topic? Whether or not to declare divisions this year. You could fly your directors in for a hand raise. Or you could alternatively just write a simple message, like a social media post, on your Smart Company dashboard.

Our system already knows your approval model, therefore governs the deadlines, data, security, immutability and makes sure to resolve the results by the deadline. Got a 75% yay from your board? The algorithm automatically resolves an approval for those divisions. 

All just a few clicks on the dashboard. Done. 

But don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself. 

 

Scenario #3. You can’t be bothered to even finish this article. You just want someone to do it for you. 

Hey, we hear you. Not everyone has the time or interest to dig into the deep end of company governance. Maybe you just want to throw some money at the problem and get it over with? 

Fair enough. 

While our dashboard is designed for you to execute otherwise complex corporate tasks with just a few clicks, in the end – it really doesn’t have to be you who clicks those buttons.

You can always hire an agent to handle these things for you with your power of attorney. All we need to do is provide what we call ‘an agent view’ to your third party service, while you, as the founder of the company, still remain as the owner of the entire dashboard. To make such integration is smooth, we’ve even built an internal communication tool where you can directly chat with your agent and get mutually notified of each transaction. 

This way, you’ll be able to follow every movement that happens within your company. You can track each transaction, pull out history if ever needed, be updated in real time of important events and sleep in peace that your data is secure, immutable and still owned by no one else but you and your directors. 

One way to think of this is like driving on an autopilot.

You can just sit and ride while your agent will be able to both consult you as well as execute legal activities for you. But if things ever go sour, for whatever reason,  and you’ll want to take it over for manual steering, you always can.

 

Scenario #4: You don’t like paperwork. 

Good news – neither do we. 

This is just to say yes, we are paperless by design. If there is a corporate transaction that doesn’t comply with the respective law electronically, we simply wouldn’t even feature it on our dashboard or operate in that jurisdiction. Period. 

 

Scenario #5: You are a future thinker with big visions. 

Now, my friend, you’re sitting at the right table. 

If none of the above raised your heartbeat, perhaps the ability to tokenize your entire company will. Asia-Pacific today sits on top of the fastest growing assets under management (AuM) of all regions in the world. Estimated as high as US$29.6 Trillion by 2025, the next decade will likely see a myriad of changes from today’s fragmented economies into a fundamental systems shift in the way assets, funds and distribution regimes play out in the world economy. 

To surf a wave, you need to be ready on the spot before the wave comes.

For this, Singapore offers an excellent spot for future-oriented founders regardless of your risk appetite. 

We’ve written extensively about tokenization of assets, its common misconceptions and updates of where we are today. And this way, Smart Companies enable entirely new business models that simply don’t exist today. 

 

We are team Korporatio.

Want to learn more about Singapore Smart Companies?
We will come LIVE in just one week. Stay tuned and follow us on Twitter, Linkedin, Medium or Discord. Or drop us a hello at future@korporatio.com!