Singapore had its busiest year for new companies in a decade in 2025. An analysis of ACRA data by Emerhub counted 77,579 new registrations, up 8.5% on the year before.
That works out to about 213 new companies a day. Most of them are now past their first anniversary, which is when the easy part of running a company ends.
A Record Year for New Companies
The growth was not spread evenly. Holding companies grew 18.7%, and freight forwarding registrations almost doubled. December 2025 alone saw 6,233 new companies, 43.5% more than December 2024, which the analysts linked to year-end restructuring.
The new companies are also less tied to the CBD than before. The analysis found that 83% of 2025 registrations were outside the traditional CBD core, and 23% of all companies use virtual office addresses shared by 100 or more firms.
Those virtual addresses are usually provided by corporate service firms as part of an incorporation package. For thousands of these new companies, the same provider that set them up also handles their compliance.
What Changes After the First Anniversary
Incorporation is a one-off job. It is quick, well-documented, and most providers do it well. The work that follows is different.
In its second year, a company files its first annual return and holds its first AGM or passes the resolutions in its place. It files its first corporate tax return. If it has hired, it is running payroll and making CPF contributions. If revenue has crossed S$1 million, it needs to be registered for GST.
These tasks need judgement, not just forms. A founder asking whether a payment is a director’s fee or a salary, or whether a customer deposit counts as revenue, needs someone who knows the company’s history. That is where many startup packages feel thin.
Packages built for incorporation tend to route questions through a shared support team. Each reply may come from someone new to the file. For a company with simple books, that is fine. For one with staff, stock, overseas customers or investors, the answers start to vary.
This is the point where many founders first think about changing providers, and start looking at a sleek alternative for growing business needs. They are not unhappy with the setup. They have simply grown into a different kind of client.
Why the Survival Numbers Matter
The same data shows how many companies do not make it. Of the 2024 cohort, 84.0% were still active after two years. For the 2023 cohort, the figure was 74.1% after three. Of companies registered in 2020, only 49% are still active.
The analysts called the first three years the critical period. That matches what ACRA has been doing. Since late 2025 it has stepped up efforts to strike off defunct companies, which pushed cessation numbers up in March 2026.
Not every struck-off company failed as a business. Some simply stopped filing. A missed annual return, left alone long enough, is one of the ways a live company ends up flagged as dormant.
For the 2025 cohort, the practical lesson is to treat year two as a checkpoint. Owners should confirm who is responsible for each filing, when it is due, and whether the provider they chose for incorporation is still the right fit for the company they have now.
