COMPASS Points and Employment Pass Renewals in 2027: The October Check Every Singapore SME Owes Itself

If an Employment Pass in your company expires in 2027, check its COMPASS score now rather than at renewal time. COMPASS has applied to renewals since September 2024, so a pass that was approved comfortably in 2023 or 2024 is now re-scored against benchmarks that MOM updates every September and against your own hiring over the past two years. The two scores most likely to have moved are not about the employee at all: they are about how much you pay relative to your sector and how your local staff mix compares with your peers. Both can be read today, and both take months rather than weeks to change.

What is COMPASS and why does it decide a 2027 renewal?

COMPASS is a points test. A candidate needs 40 points to qualify. Points come from four foundational criteria worth 0, 10 or 20 each: salary against local professional salaries in your sector, qualifications, how concentrated the candidate's nationality is among your professional staff, and how your share of local professional staff compares with other firms in your sector. Two bonus criteria can add points: a job on the Shortage Occupation List, and recognised contribution to strategic economic priorities such as innovation or internationalisation.

The important part for a small employer is that two of the four foundational criteria score the company, not the person. You cannot fix them in the renewal form. They are the result of who you hired over the last two years and what you paid them.

Which 2027 renewals are actually at risk?

Three patterns account for most near-misses in a small firm.

The first is salary drift. The salary criterion compares the candidate's fixed monthly salary against local professional salaries for their sector and age. Those benchmarks are refreshed each year, and the minimum qualifying salary was raised in the 2025 revision to 5,600 dollars for most sectors and 6,200 dollars for financial services, rising steeply with age. An employee who scored 20 points on salary at 32 can score 10 at 37 on the same pay, because the benchmark for their age band has moved past them. Confirm the current figure for your sector on MOM's site before you budget anything.

The second is nationality concentration. If a quarter or more of your professional staff hold the same nationality as the candidate, that criterion scores zero. In a team of eight this is easy to trip without noticing, and hiring two more people of the same nationality can quietly remove 20 points from a renewal 18 months later.

The third is age. Pay that was generous for a 30 year old is mid-range for a 40 year old, and the benchmark does not care that the person is the same person.

What changes when you cross 25 local professional staff?

This is the threshold most small employers do not know exists. A company with fewer than 25 local professional, managerial, executive and technical staff is not scored on the diversity and local-support criteria. It is given 10 points on each by default. That is 20 points of the 40 needed, handed over for being small.

Cross 25 local professional staff and the default disappears. Both criteria are then scored against your sector peers, and the result can be 0, 10 or 20 each. A firm that grows from 22 to 27 local professionals during 2027 can therefore see a renewal that would have passed easily become a renewal that fails, with no change to the employee, the salary or the job.

If your headcount is anywhere near that line, treat the next hire as a COMPASS decision as well as a hiring decision. Count carefully: the measure is local professional staff on CPF, not total headcount, and not contractors.

How do you find your real score before MOM does?

Two tools, both free. MOM's self-assessment tool returns a points breakdown for a named candidate, salary, sector and age. Your firm-level scores for diversity and local support are shown in your company profile in the government portal you use for pass applications, so you are not guessing at the two criteria you cannot control in the form.

Do this once for every pass expiring in 2027, and write the result somewhere a successor can find it. A spreadsheet with pass holder, expiry date, current points, which criterion is weakest and what it would take to move it is enough. Renewal applications open up to six months before expiry, which means a pass expiring in June 2027 is already inside a decision window that starts in December 2026.

What can a small team still fix with a few months of runway?

Raise the salary to the next band. This is the lever with the shortest lead time and the clearest cost. Price it before you promise it: the increase is permanent and it carries CPF for locals in the same bracket, so model the annual figure, not the monthly one.

Check the Shortage Occupation List against the actual job. The bonus is worth 10 or 20 points and the list is revised, so a role that did not qualify in 2024 may qualify now. The job title in your records has to match the work.

Rebalance the next two hires. Local professional hires improve the local-support criterion once you are being scored on it, and avoiding further concentration in one nationality protects the diversity criterion. Neither works retroactively, which is exactly why this is an October conversation and not an April one.

Have a fallback. If a renewal is marginal and cannot be fixed, you need to know by the time you submit, not after a rejection. The honest options are a restructured role, a local hire with a handover period, or relocating the work. All three take longer than the appeal you were hoping to file.

What does the October checklist look like?

List every pass with its expiry date. Run the self-assessment for each one at its 2027 age and current salary. Read your firm's two company-level scores in the portal. Count your local professional staff and note the distance to 25. Flag anything under 40 points or within one band of it. Decide, for each flagged pass, whether the answer is money, a list check, a hiring sequence or a replacement plan, and put a name and a date against it.

That is an afternoon of work. The alternative is finding out in the middle of 2027 that a role you depend on has four weeks left and no legal way to keep it.

Frequently asked questions

Does COMPASS apply to Employment Pass renewals or only new applications?

Both. It applied to new applications from September 2023 and to renewals from September 2024, so every renewal from now on is scored. A pass granted before COMPASS existed is still re-scored when it comes up for renewal.

My company has fewer than 25 local professional staff. Can I ignore the diversity and local-support criteria?

For now, yes - you receive 10 points on each by default. Do not treat that as permanent. The exemption is tied to your headcount, so it ends the moment you grow past the threshold, and the renewal that follows will be scored on your real figures.

Can I appeal a COMPASS result?

You can submit an appeal, but COMPASS is arithmetic rather than discretion, and an appeal that does not change one of the inputs rarely changes the outcome. Effort is better spent moving a criterion before you apply, which is why the check belongs six to twelve months ahead of expiry.