GuideMeSingapore

Asia is the place to be if you are planning to start a business in the financial service sector. There has been a recent spate of reports documenting Asia’s rising wealth and the growth of its financial services industry. Take for instance a recent Wall Street Journal article that stated:

In the exclusive world of private banking, a gravitational shift of resources toward Asia is well under way. A shift in profits may take longer to follow. A number of banks are either acquiring or setting up businesses to manage private wealth in an effort to tap the rising population of multimillionaires, particularly in China and India.

There have been several reports this month about Singapore’s private banks’ recruitment drive and the growing confidence in the Asia Pacific market. According to a China Post news report, UBS’s CEO Oswald Grubel even went as far as to say,

We have been in Switzerland for 150 years. I’m sure that if we had invested here as much as we invested in Switzerland or the US or Europe, it would have been completely different. But we think that it’s not too late.

Asia’s financial services industry is flourishing and while existing players are expanding their resources, new entrants are steadily rising in the market. The bottom-line is that the future of wealth management is in Asia. Consequently, the future of financial advisers, hedge funds, boutique private banks and fund managers is also in Asia – more specifically, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Given the lucrative business potential this sector holds, an increasing number of entrepreneurs and enterprising professionals are exploring the possibilities of setting up a financial services firm in Singapore. Testimony to this fact is Singapore’s 2008 company formation data, which reveals that the financial industry recorded the third highest number of company registrations.

Here are PM Lee’s thoughts on Singapore’s financial sector…

Interested in doing business in Singapore? Find out how to incorporate a Singapore company.