Singapore Banking Secrets are Safe for Now

As Singapore strives to be a leading financial centre in the region, banking secrecy laws have become increasingly important. Banking secrecy is what guarantees clients of banks that their information will be kept confidential and will not be passed on to private individuals or official bodies. In Singapore, this comes in the form of section 47 of the Banking Act ("the Act") which places banks under statutory obligations of secrecy in respect of customer account information. This obligation of confidentiality extends to officers in a bank, defined in section 2(1) of the Act to include a director, secretary, employee, receiver, manager and liquidator. Banks are allowed to disclose information about customers and their accounts only under narrowly described circumstances.