Change of address Singapore – Learn 8 Key Must know tips!

Change of address Singapore | Are you looking to change your address in Singapore, then this article is for you!

Moving to a new place or shifting your home or registered office of your company is a big step so we hope this article will be a good checklist to help you think through potential issues before shifting.  After we deals with how to change your Singapore residential address, this article, then goes on to tell you how your change of address will affect your company secretary/ACRA filings if you are a shareholder/director of a Singapore company.

Before we go into the article proper, we wish to quote Reinhold Niebuhr who said that:

“Change is the essence of life; be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.”  

Residential Address Change

The first type of change of address relates to how you can officially change your residential address in Singapore.  The governing Singapore authority for your NRIC/Passport as most of us would know is the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, also known in Singapore as the ICA.  For more details on what you need to do to change your residential address, you can visit the ICA website.

But here is a quick summary round down on what you need to do

1. Go to any police post to report a change of address and update NRIC.  Before you head down, you need to update at least one utility provider (i.e. Singtel/Singapore Power etc) to change your address and bring this updated utility bill down as proof of change of address;

• Updates to company secretary

If you are an existing shareholder or director or listed as a company secretary of a Singapore company, you would have a record in the ACRA registry and also in the physical registers of documents for each Singapore Company so any change in your address would require the company secretary to amend all the registers where your address is listed.  Some examples of changes that you need to make:

Section 370A – Alternate ACRA Address

ACRA allows directors of Singapore Companies to file an alternate address, so that is the reason why for Singapore listed companies, you can see some of them listing the director’s address as the Company’s address.

Section 372 – To update change of address

For a foreign company registered in Singapore, if any director or authorized representative changes his residential address, such address change must be lodged within 30 days after the date of change.

• Update all of your utility providers

Just changing your address change with one party in Singapore does not mean that all your address in all other databases will be changed.  You would need to go through your entire monthly list of utility bills and notify each of them one by one.

Change of company office address

• Update company secretary – for more than one coy

If you are a shareholder/director of more than one company in Singapore, you would need to ask/notify your company secretary of your change of address.  If the shareholder of a Singapore company is a corporate entity, then that corporate entity needs to furnish proof of the change of address to each company secretary that it has records with.

• Draft a board resolution and get board approval;

If your company itself is the one changing its address, you would need to draft a board resolution and then get the directors to sign off on it.

• File with ACRA;

After your board signs off on your change in address, you would need to file the same with ACRA.

• Update all hardcopy statutory registers;

Your company will have many hard copy statutory registers which are maintained by your company secretary.  Your company secretary should make the consequential changes across all those statutory registers.

• Update all government databases/overseas government agencies filings/foreign branch that may not be all linked.

Most companies in Singapore may have licence applications with several government agencies.  While all the agencies are corp-pass linked, not all their databases are linked for backend details of the companies so you may have to go one by one to check and update your address details.

Do contact us if you wish to find out more about the process of changing your address for your company/business.

Finally, we would like to leave you with a quote for the day: Mahatma Gandhi said:

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

About Raffles CPA

Raffles CPA is a leading global professional services firm headquartered in Singapore that serves global clients. 

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