Singapore family office hiring is a discipline of its own. The roles are senior, the candidates are sensitive, the salary thresholds are real, and the hiring decisions interact with the family office’s MAS licensing position, its 13O or 13U tax-incentive status and its local-business-spending obligations. Get the EP wrong and the tax incentive can be at risk; pick the wrong pass class and the principal’s flexibility is constrained for years.
This is a 2026 walk-through of how single family offices (SFOs) in Singapore should think about pass selection — Personalised Employment Pass, Employment Pass, or ONE Pass — for principals, family members, investment professionals and household staff. The numbers and rules below are stated as at 28 April 2026, with as-at dates flagged where they have just changed.
For the broader senior-talent pass landscape, see our EP vs PEP vs ONE Pass guide.
Singapore Family Office Hiring: The Three Pass Audiences
A typical Singapore SFO has three populations to pass-manage, each with its own constraints.
Audience 1 — The principal and family. The patriarch, matriarch, or anchor family members. Often want maximum mobility (multiple jurisdictions per year), high net worth, and resistance to being tied to a single Singapore employer. Their salary, in the technical sense, is whatever the SFO pays them as a director or chief investment officer.
Audience 2 — Investment professionals (IPs). The non-family workforce: portfolio managers, analysts, traders, real-asset specialists. Must meet MAS’s IP definition for 13O/13U eligibility. These are conventional EP candidates.
Audience 3 — Household and operations staff. Personal assistants, governance officers, occasionally chefs or estate managers. Often the most awkward to pass-classify because the role is “private”, but the EP is filed in a corporate name.
The 13O and 13U Backdrop That Drives the Hiring
Family office hiring decisions cannot be separated from the underlying tax-incentive scheme. Per the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) administering the section 13O and 13U schemes under the Income Tax Act:
Section 13O — onshore fund tax exemption
Minimum committed assets under management of S$20 million, at least two investment professionals (with a one-year grace period to hire the second), at least one of whom is non-family, annual local business spending of at least S$200,000, and the fund is Singapore-incorporated.
Section 13U — enhanced-tier fund tax exemption
Minimum committed AUM of S$50 million, at least three investment professionals with at least one non-family, annual local business spending of at least S$500,000, and broader fund-vehicle eligibility (including Variable Capital Companies).
The IP requirement is the operational pivot for hiring. Each IP must be a Singapore tax resident, employed full-time (more than 50% of working time), with relevant investment-management qualifications and experience, and earning at least the prevailing EP salary threshold. The IP count is checked at MAS’s annual review; falling below it puts the tax exemption at risk.
For the corporate-side mechanics — VCC incorporation, MAS application, annual reporting — our sister firm Raffles Corporate Services handles the family-office set-up alongside the hiring work.
Pass Selection for the Principal
The principal’s pass is the most-asked question in family-office hiring. Three options:
ONE Pass — usually the answer for ultra-high-net-worth principals
The Overseas Networks & Expertise Pass is purpose-built for senior global talent. Per MOM, the salary criterion is a fixed monthly salary of at least S$30,000 in the year preceding the application, OR an outstanding-achievement track record (which can include investment-management track record at the principal level).
The ONE Pass advantages for a principal: five-year duration, multiple concurrent employers permitted, COMPASS-exempt, and the principal can hold directorships in multiple Singapore entities without separate pass approvals.
For full eligibility mechanics, see our ONE Pass eligibility guide.
Employment Pass — the conservative route
For principals who do not meet the S$30,000 ONE Pass salary or whose achievement profile is not yet ONE-Pass-strong, the financial services EP at S$6,200+ per month qualifying salary (rising on COMPASS C1 sectoral benchmark for senior PMETs) remains the workhorse. The constraint: the EP is tied to one employer, so a principal who wants to also hold a directorship at a non-related entity needs a separate Letter of Consent (LOC) for the secondary directorship.
Personalised Employment Pass — niche
The PEP scheme has been narrowed in recent years. For sensitive roles where the principal wants to remain employer-agnostic between two related entities, the PEP can work. The salary and residency requirements should be confirmed at the point of application, given the PEP scheme’s recent tightening.
Read across to our Complete EP Guide 2026 and COMPASS framework explainer.
Pass Selection for Investment Professionals
Investment Professionals are conventional EP candidates with three family-office-specific compliance points.
One: Singapore tax residency. The IP must be a Singapore tax resident, which under IRAS tax-residency rules generally means at least 183 days physical presence in Singapore during the calendar year. An IP who flies in and out of Singapore extensively (common for multi-asset family offices with regional deal flow) needs careful day-count tracking.
Two: Non-family-member ratio. At least one IP must be non-family for 13O; at least one for 13U. MAS’s definition of “family member” follows the family-office’s family tree. A cousin three generations removed who is on the IP team may still be classified as family. The compliance instinct: keep one IP visibly non-family, with documented unrelated background.
Three: Salary-floor consistency. The IP must earn at least the prevailing EP salary threshold (S$5,600 most sectors, S$6,200 financial services as at 1 January 2026) AND be paid at a level consistent with their stated role and experience. MAS reviews look for synthetic IP roles where the salary is set at the floor.
Pass Selection for Household and Operations Staff
This is the operationally awkward category. A long-serving household manager from London being relocated to Singapore is functionally a private employee, but the EP is filed by the SFO entity. Three nuances:
The role description on MOM’s EP application should reflect the actual function (e.g. “executive assistant — chief of staff”, “household and lifestyle operations manager”). Vague titles trigger COMPASS-scoring problems.
The salary should be benchmarked against PMET roles in the household-services sector, not against the IP team. Inflated salaries to push the COMPASS C1 score look synthetic to MOM and can prompt verification queries.
For household staff who do not meet EP salary thresholds (e.g., a personal chef at S$4,000 per month), the S Pass route is available — but the family office will then incur a foreign worker levy and quota constraint. See our S Pass guide 2026.
Local-Hire Discipline: The Quietly Important Compliance Point
Both 13O and 13U schemes carry annual local-business-spending floors (S$200,000 and S$500,000 respectively). A material part of that spending should be local-employee compensation, not third-party fees. SFOs that meet the AUM and IP-count tests but fail to demonstrate local-payroll spending can face MAS queries at annual review.
The practical fix: ensure the SFO carries one or two local-citizen or PR PMET roles (compliance officer, fund administrator, secretarial co-ordinator) with full CPF contributions. This also strengthens COMPASS C4 (local PMET share) for any concurrent EP applications. See our HR compliance calendar for the annual cadence.
The PR and Citizenship Question
SFO principals frequently want clarity on the PR pathway, especially for the second generation. Per ICA’s holistic assessment criteria, family-office principals tend to score well on financial contribution and length of stay, but the assessment also looks at integration and family ties to Singapore.
Realistic timelines: 2-3 years on EP/ONE Pass before a PR application is defensible, with approval rates highest where the principal demonstrates active business engagement (rather than passive investment) and the family is physically resident. Our pieces on the Singapore PR pathway 2026 and Global Investor Programme cover the alternative routes; for most family-office principals the standard PTS or family-ties pathway is the more efficient route, not the GIP.
Five Mistakes to Avoid in 2026
From our family-office pass casework:
One — using the EP for the principal when the ONE Pass is available. Eats into the principal’s flexibility and creates renewal friction.
Two — under-classifying household staff as IPs to push 13O/13U headcount. MAS sees this immediately at annual review.
Three — treating spouse’s role as automatic. The DP-LOC route was closed in 2021; spouse needs own EP, S Pass or LOC under the LTVP route only if attached to a Singapore citizen or PR (not the principal).
Four — ignoring COMPASS at IP level. Even where the IP is salary-strong, COMPASS C3 and C4 still matter, and a thin firm-level diversity profile catches up at renewal.
Five — failing to align the local-business-spending profile with the headcount story. The AUM, IP count and local spending must all hold up at annual review.
Conclusion
Family office hiring in Singapore in 2026 is a structured negotiation between the MAS tax incentive (13O or 13U), the MOM pass framework (EP, ONE Pass, PEP, S Pass), the IRAS tax-residency rules, and the family’s own preferences for mobility, privacy, and successor-generation positioning. The tax incentive sets the floor (AUM, IP count, local spending); the pass framework dictates how each role is classified; the principal’s choice between ONE Pass and EP determines the next five years of operational flexibility.
If you are setting up a single family office in Singapore, hiring an IP team into an existing 13O/13U structure, or relocating the principal alongside dependants and household staff, our team at Singapore Employment Agency (the consumer brand of Little Big Employment Agency Pte Ltd, MOM Licence 19C9790) handles the entire pass workstream. For VCC incorporation, MAS 13O/13U application, accounting and corporate-secretarial work, we coordinate directly with our sister firm Raffles Corporate Services.
— The Editorial Team, Little Big Employment Agency