Truthfully, if you declare bankruptcy, it’s not the world’s end. Instead, you’re asking for government help to ensure you and your lenders and investors get everything properly settled legally. However, a bankruptcy search will affect your credit score, and it’s highly likely to affect your borrowing opportunities in the future. Here is everything you need to know about individual and corporate bankruptcy searches in Singapore.
What is A Bankruptcy or Corporate Insolvency Search?
Individual and corporate bankruptcy or insolvency declarations aren’t the same things. Bankruptcy searches for individuals who focus on all your financing and borrowing activity. On the other hand, corporate insolvency concentrates on a business’ financial dealings and contracts to lenders and investors. Each one has various parameters that differentiate them from each other, as we will illustrate below.
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Bankruptcy Search
Individuals unable to pay a mountain of debt will face bankruptcy charges from lenders. According to Singapore’s law, an individual with over S $15,000 in unpaid debts has a reason to file for personal bankruptcy. On the other hand, lenders can send the High Court’s bankruptcy application without notifying the bankrupt borrower. The search parameters concentrate on checking an individual’s bankruptcy status.
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Corporate Insolvency Search
This insolvency search focuses on business activities. Any Singaporean company that has failed to fulfill numerous lender and investor obligations are automatically insolvent. Therefore, all aggrieved parties, including lenders and investors, can file bankruptcy on the business’ behalf. An insolvency search is an attempt to verify a company’s liquidation status.
Who Can Conduct These Searches?
Anybody can conduct an individual or corporate insolvency search. Individual insolvency searches are beneficial for employers and creditors because it gives them insight into the risks involved in hiring or working with a particular person. With tangible insolvency search data on their hands, it’s easy to decide on their specific applications.
Employees and investors can conduct an insolvency search to gain more insight into a company’s business practices and financial standing. Truthfully, we highly recommend that everyone conduct a credit search to determine their prospect’s risk level.
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Investors
Companies answer to investors, and we can use the employer-employee working relationship as an analogy. Businesses report all their financial activities to investors. Therefore, investors looking to grow money in viable businesses will perform a corporate insolvency search to determine risks and make the right investment call.
Additionally, they may conduct an individual insolvency search for chief company executives to determine their financial management, decision-making, and accountability skills.
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Creditors
Lenders and creditors have everything to lose working with individuals with poor financial management skills. Truthfully, a credit report inquiry is often enough to determine an individual’s risk level. However, an insolvency search hit might help them avoid a troublesome borrower, especially if their credit score does not reflect their previous bankruptcy.
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Employers
Truthfully, an employer will observe an applicant’s technical and academic knowledge through their resume. Next, they’ll determine whether the individual’s personality can fit their prospective work environment and teammates. Reputable employers often conduct an applicant credit and insolvency search to learn more about their financial management and decision-making skills necessary in any work environment.
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Employees
An employee might not hold stock or shares from the company (but sometimes, they can receive company stock options by retirement). Still, they’re putting both their growth and possible professional lifetime in an individual business’ hands. They can conduct a corporate insolvency search for any company to mitigate its risk of dissolution and liquidation. A corporate insolvency search to ascertain the latter’s liquidation status has helped many Singaporean and foreign workers avoid working with “dead-end” businesses with pending bankruptcy orders.
Steps To Perform a Bankruptcy or Corporate Insolvency Search
To get the best individual or corporate insolvency search results, it pays to know the proper steps. Doing these will help you find the best information last updated in the same year. Here are the basic steps to perform bankruptcy searches.
The Ministry of Law oversees all bankruptcy and insolvency cases, so it isn’t far-fetched that they run the online services to conduct bankruptcy queries. Upon visiting their website, creditors can log in using their creditor partner access using SingPass.
You’ll need the target individual’s identification number or bankruptcy order number for individual insolvency searches. On the other hand, corporate bankruptcy searches require the company’s unique entity number (UEN) or “winding up” reference number.
Once you hit search, you’ll see all possible items matching your criteria. If you can’t find the individual or company name, you’re looking for, repeat the process and observe all reference numbers for any discrepancies.
Fees You’ll Need to Pay
An individual or corporate insolvency search isn’t the most affordable one out there — you’ll need to pay S $6 per search result you want to view. Thankfully, it’s the same price for both individual or corporate insolvency results.
You can pay for your searches using the following credit or debit payment methods (except for eNets):
- Visa
- Mastercard
- eNets
A Note on Search Result Validity
All corporate insolvency records will permanently remain in the MinLaw’s record. On the other hand, bankrupt individual cases discharged with unsettled debts will remain on record. Undischarged bankruptcies will remain on both individual and corporate records. After 5 years, all Singapore records will delete all properly-discharged personal bankruptcies.
Usual Ways The Following Parties Use Bankruptcy or Corporate Insolvency Search Data
An individual and corporate insolvency search is sensitive information, and Singapore keeps records on who sees it. While bad actors can use it against borrowers deep in debt (such as Ah Longs), reputable parties will use it for decision-making and risk-mitigation procedures. Here are the usual ways these individuals use this data to guide their next steps.
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Employers
Truthfully, a borrower with a poor credit score and has a pending bankruptcy order in Singapore, will have limited employment options in high-level occupations, such as management and organization.
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Lenders
Lenders have all the right to refuse service to poor credit and bankruptcy-laden borrowers or offer them an alternative service, usually high-interest, low-amount unsecured loans.
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Investors
Insolvent companies with pending liquidation orders from the High Court dents any company’s reputation. Even if the business seems to have exceptional viability once it has finished liquidation, it will affect an investor’s future decision.
Related
What Happens When I Declare Bankruptcy
The Right Information Can Always Save You At The Right Time
Bankruptcies reflect an individual or business’ risk value and behavior. Truthfully, accurate data can save anyone at the right time. The right financing information and opportunity can save you thousands from expenses and poor investment choices.
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