You will be able to leave instructions that let your family locate and claim your overseas holdings.
Hakim made a CPF nomination years ago, and he has a will. He assumed that covered everything. Then he remembered his cousin's year of letters from lesson 4.3, What your family faces to get the shares back, and checked. His CPF nomination covered his CPF savings and nothing else. His will left everything to his wife but named no overseas account, and his wife did not know the name of either broker he used.
This lesson is about closing that gap. It takes an evening and a conversation.
A CPF nomination tells the CPF Board who should receive your CPF savings when you die. It covers the money in your CPF accounts. It does not cover bank accounts, insurance policies with their own nominations, property, or brokerage accounts. The Singapore personal finance system, lesson 8.2, CPF and insurance nominations, explains what each nomination covers.
Your overseas brokerage accounts pass as part of your estate. If you have a will, they go as the will directs. If you do not, they are distributed under intestacy rules: for most people in Singapore, the Intestate Succession Act, and for Muslims, Islamic inheritance law as administered here. Either way, an executor or administrator has to go through the steps in lesson 4.3 to collect them.
A will does not have to list every account to cover it. A general clause can pass everything you own. But naming your overseas accounts, or at least stating that you have assets held overseas, can make the executor's job easier. It tells them to look, and it gives them something to show a broker.
There are also questions a general will may not answer well. Whether one will covers assets in several countries, how a foreign broker will treat a Singapore grant of probate, and how the will interacts with any US estate tax filing from lesson 4.1 are matters for a lawyer who handles wills. If your overseas holdings are sizeable, speak to one about your will. The Singapore personal finance system, lesson 8.1, What a will covers, and what it does not, covers the basics of wills.
The note you wrote in lesson 4.3 was a start. Now make it complete. For each overseas account, list:
The broker's brand and the exact legal entity your account is with, from lesson 1.1. The country it is licensed in and its regulator. Your account number or client ID. The broker's contact route for deceased estates, which is often a specific email address or form on its website, not general support. Where the statements and documents are kept, meaning your folder from lesson 7.1, The records worth keeping and where to keep them.
Finding the deceased estates contact is worth the five minutes. Search the broker's help pages for "deceased", "estate" or "bereavement". If nothing comes up, ask support how an executor should contact them, and write down the answer.
The list should not contain your passwords. A note that lists every account and its login is a gift to anyone who finds it.
Keep logins separately, in a method your executor can access when needed. A password manager with an emergency access feature is one route. A sealed note kept with your will is another. What matters is that the method exists, that one trusted person knows where it is, and that it is not stored in the same place as the account list.
Logins are not strictly needed for the claim itself, since the broker will deal with the executor through its own process. But access to your email and broker app can help the executor find statements and confirm balances quickly, especially for brokers that send nothing by post.
The most important step is the shortest. A list nobody knows about is as good as no list. Tell one trusted person, usually your executor or spouse, that the list exists and where it is. You do not have to share the contents now. You only have to make sure it will be found.
Hakim updated his note that evening, with both brokers, their entities, his client IDs, the deceased estates email for each and the path to his records folder. He told his wife where it was kept and that his logins were in a separate place she could reach. Then he booked a call with a lawyer to ask about adding his overseas accounts to his will.
For the activity, update your executor note from module 4 with every account, its contact route and where its documents are kept, then tell one trusted person where to find it.
Update your executor note from module 4 with every account, contact route and document location, and tell one trusted person where it is.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).