When somebody registers a new business entity on Bizfile, every other person named in it has to log in and endorse their own appointment. All endorsements and the registration payment must be completed within 60 days, or the application is rejected and has to be filed again.
Endorsement costs nothing and takes about two minutes. It is still the single most common reason a Singapore registration stalls, because it depends on other people doing something, and those people are often abroad, often busy, and often unaware that anything is waiting for them.
The step exists for a good reason. Being named as a director, partner or manager of a Singapore entity carries real personal exposure. ACRA is not willing to take one filer’s word for it that four other people agreed. The endorsement is each person saying, in their own Bizfile session under their own Singpass, that yes, this is me and yes, I agreed.
Who has to endorse
Everyone named in the filing except the person who filed it. The filer has already made the declaration inside the application, so they do not endorse a second time.
Beyond that, it depends on the entity type. ACRA publishes the authoritative list on its endorsing new business registrations page; the version below adds what each line means in practice.
| Entity being registered | Who must endorse | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Local company | Directors, the secretary, shareholders, and members of a company limited by guarantee | Shareholder endorsement applies at incorporation. It is a one-off gate at the start, not a permanent feature of every share transaction. |
| Sole proprietorship or partnership | Owners, any nominee or trustee, and the authorised representative | The authorised representative matters where the owners are not locally resident. |
| Limited liability partnership | Partners and managers | The manager is frequently also a partner and then has to endorse twice, once in each capacity. |
| Limited partnership | General partners, a general partner acting as nominee or trustee, and the manager | Limited partners do not appear in this list. |
| Public accounting firm, accounting LLP, public accounting corporation | Partners, directors, secretary, shareholders and public accountant employees, depending on the structure | These carry extra endorsing roles created by the Accountants Act. Check the specific list for your structure. |
| Foreign company branch | Nobody | No endorsement round at all, because a branch registration must be filed by a corporate service provider. |
If the person being appointed is a company, not a human
A corporate shareholder or a corporate position holder cannot log in and click a button, so an authorised officer of that entity does it on the entity’s behalf. A director or the secretary of the corporate shareholder is the usual person.
That means the corporate shareholder needs working Corppass access before the endorsement can happen. If the corporate shareholder is a newly incorporated holding company that has never transacted on Bizfile, budget time for that. Corppass setup is not instant, and the sixty days do not pause while you arrange it. Our guide on logging in to Bizfile as a business user covers the mechanics.
How the request actually reaches you
It does not arrive as a letter. It appears as a task on your Bizfile dashboard under Pending actions, and you are alerted through the contact details that were keyed into the registration form: the mobile number and email address the filer entered for you.
That dependency is worth dwelling on. If the filer typed your email with a transposed character, or used an address you abandoned two jobs ago, you will never be told. The task will still be sitting on your dashboard, and you will still be responsible for it, but nothing will have prompted you to look.
Two practical habits fix this permanently. First, check the contact details in the application before it is submitted rather than after. Second, log in to Bizfile yourself once, early, and see what is waiting. Our note on the ACRA alerts companies miss covers the wider notification problem, and verifying your email for Bizfile deals with the verification step that blocks some transactions entirely.
The steps, in order
If you are an individual being appointed:
- Go to Bizfile and click Login, then choose Individual User. You will be authenticated through Singpass. If you have never done this, read logging in to Bizfile as an individual first.
- On your dashboard, find the endorsement request under Pending actions.
- Click Endorse.
- Read the registration details and the specific endorsement action. Check the spelling of your name, your identification number and the position you are being given. This is the last convenient moment to catch a typo that will otherwise sit in a public register.
- Complete the endorsement.
- Confirm you have a confirmation message. If you hold more than one position, you must endorse each one separately and you should see a separate confirmation for each.
If you are endorsing on behalf of a corporate entity:
- Log in to Bizfile and choose Business User, which routes you through Corppass.
- Select the entity you are representing. If you act for several, this is where people pick the wrong one.
- Find the endorsement request under Pending actions and click Endorse.
- Review and complete it.
- Again, one confirmation per position. If your company is both a shareholder and a corporate position holder, that is two endorsements.
The multiple positions trap
This deserves its own warning because it is quiet. Someone who is both a director and a shareholder of the new company has two endorsements waiting, not one. They endorse the director appointment, see a green confirmation, and log out satisfied.
Sixty days later the registration is rejected and nobody understands why, because everybody remembers endorsing. Before you close the browser, go back to Pending actions and confirm it is empty.
What happens when the sixty days run out
The application is rejected. You register again from the beginning.
| Item | Position |
|---|---|
| Fee to endorse | Free |
| Approval time for an endorsement | Immediate |
| Deadline for all endorsements and payment | 60 days from submission |
| Consequence of missing it | Application rejected, resubmission required |
| Is an extension available | No. Plan around the window, not against it. |
The quiet cost sits elsewhere. Your approved business name was reserved for 120 days from approval, and that clock has been running the whole time. Lose sixty days to an endorsement stall and you may find the name reservation expiring underneath you, which means a fresh name application and a fresh fee before you can even resubmit the registration. The filing session itself is where those two clocks first meet.
The corporate service provider exception
If a corporate service provider filed the registration, there is no endorsement round. The same applies where a group of companies filed it.
This is not a loophole and it is not a shortcut around consent. A registered provider is subject to its own regulatory regime, including customer due diligence obligations, and it is answerable for having verified the identity and the agreement of the people it names. ACRA is substituting one form of assurance for another. The Corporate Service Providers Act 2024 compliance FAQ sets out what that regime actually requires.
The practical effect is worth stating plainly. A five-shareholder company across three time zones, filed by the founders, has five Singpass sessions and one sixty-day window standing between it and existence. The same company filed by a provider has none. If you are registering an entity with overseas participants, this is usually the deciding factor, not the fee.
Non-resident foreigners must engage a provider in any event.
What goes wrong in practice
A proposed officer has no Singpass. Foreigners can hold Singpass, but not all of them do, and arranging it is not something you want to start on day fifty-five.
The contact details were wrong. The endorsement request is sitting on a dashboard that nobody is looking at.
Partial endorsement. One of several positions endorsed, the rest overlooked, the application quietly incomplete.
Corppass was never arranged for a corporate shareholder. Very common where the shareholder is itself a newly registered holding company.
Somebody endorses without reading. The endorsement is a personal confirmation, not a rubber stamp. If your identification number or your position is wrong on the screen, endorsing locks that error into a public register, and correcting it afterwards is a separate filing. Read the screen.
The filer assumes silence means agreement. It does not. Chase at the fortnight mark, again at the month mark, and do not let it reach day fifty.
For entity types with their own endorsement quirks, see our guides to registering an LLP and registering a sole proprietorship or partnership.
Frequently asked questions
Does the person who filed the registration also need to endorse?
No. The filer makes a declaration inside the application itself, so a separate endorsement is not required from them. Everybody else named in the registration does need to endorse, including shareholders of a new local company and both partners and managers of an LLP.
How much does endorsement cost?
Nothing. Endorsement is free and takes effect immediately once completed. The fee that has to be paid within the same sixty-day window is the registration fee itself, which for a local company is $300 and is payable by the filer once every endorsement is in.
What if a shareholder simply refuses to endorse?
There is no override. Without every required endorsement the application cannot proceed to payment, and after sixty days it is rejected and must be resubmitted. A refusal is a commercial problem rather than a Bizfile problem, and it is far easier to resolve at day five than at day fifty-five.
Can I endorse from overseas?
Yes, provided you have Singpass and can access Bizfile. There is no requirement to be physically in Singapore to endorse. The practical constraint is the Singpass credential itself, not your location, so confirm that every overseas participant has working access before the registration is submitted.
Do shareholders have to endorse every time new shares are issued?
Endorsement of shareholders applies to the new business registration. It is a gate at incorporation rather than a permanent feature of every later share transaction. Ongoing share allotments and transfers follow their own filing requirements, which are a different process with different deadlines.
Removing the step altogether
Most endorsement failures are coordination failures. Nobody refused, nobody objected, nobody did anything wrong. The request simply sat on a dashboard while five people assumed somebody else had handled it, and then the window closed.
Raffles Corporate Services files incorporations as a registered corporate service provider, which removes the endorsement round entirely and replaces it with due diligence we carry out directly with each officer and shareholder. If you have a registration part-filed and stuck because two people have not endorsed, tell us how many days are left and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth chasing or worth restarting.
You can reach us through Raffles Corporate Services, or read more on Singapore corporate secretarial practice at Singapore Secretary Services.
— The Editorial Team, Raffles Corporate Services