Process Agents
A process agent in Singapore serves court papers for foreign entities or financial transactions, facilitating legal processes. BluTrust provides this service, ensuring compliance and ease in legal matters.
What is a process agent?
A process agent is an individual or an entity to whom court papers can be served. To keep legal processes simple, financial institutions and lenders will include a clause requiring you to appoint a local company as your process agent. This is to ensure that if you face any lawsuits from the said financial institution or lender, the lender will not need to physically deliver the papers to you. Instead, they will deliver it to your process agent.
Why and when do you need one?
You’d need a process agent if you are either a foreign entity without a physical office in Singapore or you want to approach a financial institution or any other lender to finance something.
Any type of contract where one party may need to be able to sue the other would require a process agent, especially if one party is a foreign entity. Examples of such contracts include ship and aircraft financing deals or ship and aircraft jet engine lease contracts.
Appointing a Process Agent
A simple letter of appointment will suffice as a contract between you and your process agent.
If, however, for example, you are entering into a loan agreement, the appointment documentation will need to be as long as the repayment period for the loan in order to meet your lender’s requirements. The documentation should also include your overseas contact details where you want the process agent to forward court documents.
Many process agents will also require payment for their services before they can provide the letter of appointment. You will need to provide the following details to them together with the reciept of payment for their services:
- Identification documents (for yourself and that of the other party)
- Nature and quantum of contract(s) for which a process agent is required
- Number of contracts and duration for which a process agent is required
- Overseas/local contact details to which you want any court papers to be forwarded