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PAGAR & CO.A GATEWAY FOR WHAT’S NEXT.

For Independent Practitioners

A practice of one, without publishing where you live

An independent consultant can use a business address so that clients, contracts and filings carry a Singapore business address rather than a home one, while post still reaches them reliably. Pagar & Co. is preparing that service in Tanjong Pagar; onboarding has not opened yet.

Working alone means your address travels further than you think

When you practise on your own there is no company address to fall back on, so the address on the engagement letter is the address of your flat. It goes to the client, then to their finance system, then into a procurement record, then into whatever they migrate to next year. None of those people intend you any harm. They simply keep records, as they should.

A home address is personal data about where you sleep, and it behaves differently from a business address once it is in circulation: you cannot recall it, you cannot audit who holds it, and it stays accurate for as long as you live there. Deciding early that only one address circulates is a great deal easier than tracing it after the fact.

Where a sole practitioner’s address actually ends up

It is rarely one dramatic disclosure. It is six ordinary ones, each of which seemed unremarkable at the time.

Invoices and engagement letters
The address at the top of every document you send a client, and the one their finance team files, copies and keeps long after the engagement ends.
The notices clause
Most contracts name an address at which formal notices may be served. It is worth deciding which address that should be, rather than letting the template inherit whichever one was in the last draft.
Public filings
If you practise through a company or a registered business, certain details are filed and some of what is filed can be searched by anyone. What is shown, and to whom, is a matter for ACRA.
Directories and professional listings
Industry bodies, referral directories and speaker biographies all ask for an address, and they are rarely diligent about removing one later.
Couriers and signed-for documents
Originals still travel by courier: a signed agreement, a certificate, a bank card. Each delivery leaves your address in another company’s system.

Which details a business or company must file, and which of them are publicly searchable, are matters for ACRA. Whether a given address is appropriate as an address for service of notices in your contracts is a legal question. This page is general information, not legal advice — take advice on your own position before relying on it.

Very little post, and one letter that matters

Sole practitioners tend to receive four or five pieces of business post a year: a bank letter, a renewal, a statutory notice, an original contract sent by courier. The problem is never volume. It is that the important item is indistinguishable from the unimportant ones until somebody opens it, and you were at a client’s office all week.

The service is being built around that: an item is recorded when it is received and you are notified, so you learn that something has arrived on the day rather than on the day you next check the letterbox. If it can wait, it waits. If it cannot, you can collect it in person by arrangement, or have it forwarded to you.

Meeting a client, honestly answered

Independent practitioners meet clients occasionally, and a page like this is where providers usually start hinting at boardrooms. So, plainly: meeting space is not part of what Pagar & Co. is preparing. The service is the address and the careful handling of what arrives at it.

In practice most consultants meet at the client’s own office, at a room booked by the hour, or at a members’ club, and the premises sit in Tanjong Pagar within the central business district, which is well served for all three. What you can do at the premises is collect an item in person, by arrangement.

Sole proprietorship or company

Whether you practise as a sole proprietor or through a company changes what must be registered, where your address appears and who can see it. It is a decision with tax and liability consequences, and it is not one to take from a service provider’s website.

For our part, whether this address can serve as a registered office for a company is confirmed case by case before onboarding rather than assumed in advance.

How to structure your practice, and what each structure requires, are questions for ACRA and a qualified accountant or corporate services provider. We are not qualified to advise on them and this page does not attempt to.

Questions from independent practitioners

I am a sole proprietor, not a company. Can I still use a business address?
The service being prepared is not restricted to incorporated companies. What differs is where the address is used and what has to be registered, which depends on how you practise. Whether a particular application can be accepted is confirmed case by case before onboarding.
Will this keep my home address off the public record?
It keeps your home address out of the documents you control — invoices, engagement letters, proposals, your website, directory listings and courier records. What a public register shows is a separate question: that is determined by what you are required to file and by the register’s own rules, which are matters for ACRA rather than for us. We will not promise to remove an address from a register we do not run.
I receive almost no post. Is a service like this wasted on me?
Low volume changes the risk rather than removing it. When four letters arrive in a year and one of them is a bank notice or a statutory deadline, the failure mode is not a full letterbox — it is the single item that sat unopened while you were at a client site. Each item being recorded and notified on arrival is worth more at low volume, not less.
Can I put this address in the notices clause of my contracts?
That is a decision to take with a qualified adviser rather than from a web page. An address for service of notices carries legal consequences — including where a formal notice is deemed to have been received — and the right answer depends on your contracts and how you practise.
Can I meet clients at the premises?
No. What is being prepared is an address and the handling of what arrives at it, not meeting space, and we would rather say that plainly than let the word “office” do the implying. Collecting an item in person from the Tanjong Pagar premises by arrangement is a different matter and is part of the service.
Can I use the address for a professional body’s registration or a licence?
Some professional and regulatory bodies set their own conditions on the address a practitioner may register, and those conditions vary by profession. Ask the body concerned before assuming, and take advice if the answer is not clearly stated.

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A business address for a practice of one.

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