An onboarding or approvals app gives your team a shared record of documents, decisions and outstanding work. Start with a new build, a takeover of an existing app, or a vendor security review if a bank, insurer or payment institution has already sent you its outsourcing checklist.
What the MAS guidelines mean for a supplier
The Monetary Authority of Singapore issued its Guidelines on Outsourcing for banks on 11 December 2023, and a parallel set for financial institutions other than banks, last revised on 24 January 2025. We map your questionnaire to the current MAS framework, including applicable notices and guidelines. The Technology Risk Management Guidelines also inform supplier reviews, including questions about production access, deployments, incident handling and recovery.
A policy written after the build does not answer those questions convincingly. The design does, together with evidence you can hand over. So the build is documented while it happens: architecture decisions, data flows, access paths into production and what gets logged. For a system that already exists, the Architecture Review ($10,500 to $13,900, one to two weeks) goes through access, logging, backup and restore and data flows, and ends in a written report.
Personal data leaving Singapore
The Personal Data Protection Act 2012 is enforced by the Personal Data Protection Commission. Section 26 and Regulations 10 to 12 of the Personal Data Protection Regulations 2021 set out transfer requirements, including comparable protection and the conditions for exceptions. A signed data processing agreement alone does not establish that the recipient provides that protection.
We agree the hosting region and document the relevant transfer safeguards before development starts. Together we record the recipients, their safeguards, contractual obligations and any onward transfers so your legal team can assess the applicable transfer requirements before personal data is processed.
Two kinds of client
Companies without a technical lead: a trading business, a clinic group or a distributor that needs an app and has nobody in-house to judge the quotes. One architect writes the scope, builds the app and stays accountable for the result. You approve each milestone in writing and never have to manage developers.
Teams with their own IT: a fintech whose engineers are fully booked, or a product team inside a larger group that needs a mobile client on top of an existing API. The job is narrower then. A single app, an architecture review, or the evidence your customer's due diligence asks for, fitted into the way your team already works.
Typical builds
- A merchant onboarding app for a payment service provider, with document capture and a record of every status change
- An approvals app for a treasury or wealth team, where every action is tied to a named user
- A delivery or field service app that captures work offline and syncs once the connection is back
US dollar pricing and GST
Prices are fixed in US dollars: a First Version (MVP) from $27,800 in two to four weeks, a market-ready app from $83,300. The Singapore dollar is not pegged to the US dollar; MAS manages it against a basket of currencies, so the Singapore dollar cost of a milestone moves with the exchange rate. Each milestone is billed separately in US dollars; your payment provider determines the Singapore dollar amount.
On GST: all prices are net; the tax treatment is clarified before contract and stated in the offer.
An app that lost its developer is a different starting point: taking over an existing app.