Opening Remarks by Ms Indranee Rajah, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, Second Minister for Finance and National Development, at MDDI-ACRA Press Conference on Responsible Use of NRIC Numbers on 19 December 2024

1.  Good afternoon, everyone. I understand that the recent events had led to anxiety and uncertainty for many. I want to assure everyone that we do not take these things lightly. We are committed to take the necessary actions to rectify the situation responsibly.  

2.  Minister Josephine Teo spoke about the Government’s position on NRIC numbers, while CE/ACRA Huey Min had explained how the mistake came about.  

3.  I want to add two key points:

a.  One, it is important for ACRA to provide public access to information on individuals associated with businesses.

b.  And two, the plans going forward. 

Guarding against illicit activities

4.  The search function on the Bizfile portal covers publicly available information about business entities and their associated individuals to facilitate and support legitimate business needs, such as due diligence checks. 

a.  For instance, when representing a client, lawyers or accountants may need to verify their client’s roles in various business entities, their shareholding, and the statuses of the companies they are involved in. They cannot solely rely on their client’s assertions, but must conduct thorough background checks as part of their due diligence to evaluate the legitimacy and credibility of their client’s claims. 

b.  In another scenario, when Company A is planning to enter into a major contract with another Company B. Company A may want to do some background checks on Company B by checking the identities of its directors. If Bizfile shows that the Board of Company B has only one local director who also sits on many other Boards as a nominee director, Company A may wish to do further due diligence before committing.

5.  The service also guards against illicit activities. When the names of owners, directors and key position holders of companies are publicly known, this helps to ensure accountability and could deter individuals from engaging in illegal activities. If an individual tries to hide behind companies to conduct frauds, scams or other illicit activities, having their name publicly linked to a company allows customers or business stakeholders to easily trace them and take action. This level of transparency helps to protect the interests of all stakeholders and maintain trust in our business environment. 

6.  To be clear, ACRA does not have every citizen’s information. If you are not involved in running an entity registered with ACRA, your information will not be collected or shared by ACRA. But if you had made a filing with ACRA to become a company director, or already are a company director, then your information is collected and made publicly available.  This is because as a director, you are the public representative of the company and there will be public interest in you and the company you represent, be it from investors, customers, suppliers or other business partners.

Plans going forward

7.  And now, let me touch on our plans going forward. The People Search function remains useful and necessary to support legitimate business needs. Since the function was disabled last Friday, we have received queries on when it would be resumed.

8.  Taking into consideration users’ needs and the public’s concerns, we will introduce a revised “People Search” function next week. But the search results will not show any NRIC number, masked or unmasked. 

9.  What this means is that if you enter a full or partial name in the search, say “Emily”, the search result will return a list of matching names that contain the word “Emily”, such as Emily Tan, Emily Lee, Emily Pereira, but no NRIC number will be shown for all these individuals who appear on the search results.

10.  For those who require more information about a specific individual, including the full NRIC number, they will then pay and obtain the necessary information from Bizfile. This is the service that ACRA has to provide as the national business register of Singapore, in line with the laws administered by ACRA, like the ACRA Act and the Companies Act. 

11.  This change will make it less convenient for some users of Bizfile.  Because they may not be able to so readily identify the specific individual they are looking for from the search function.  But after assessing the situation, we believe it is the right balance to strike between corporate transparency and public concerns regarding personal information.

Learning from the incident

12.  Let me reiterate that we do not take this incident lightly. MOF and ACRA will learn from this episode and setback. We are thoroughly reviewing the incident to identify areas where we should have done and can do better, including improving the communication and coordination between agencies, and the features of our digital services. We will continue to monitor feedback on the Bizfile portal, and will review and update the Bizfile on an ongoing basis.  

_____________________
Opening Remarks by Minister Josephine Teo at Press Conference on Responsible Use of NRIC Numbers

Remarks by Chief Executive of ACRA, Mrs Chia-Tern Huey Min ↗ (opens in new tab)

Closing Remarks by Minister Josephine Teo at Press Conference on Responsible Use of NRIC Numbers