Corppass Access When an Employee Leaves: What Must Be Switched Off on the Last Day?

When an employee leaves your company, their Corppass access does not switch off by itself. Corppass runs on top of each person's own Singpass, so the login belongs to them for life, not to you. Until an admin inside your company removes their access, a former staff member can still sign in and transact with government agencies in your company's name. The only safe version of this is removal on the last working day, before they walk out, not at the end of the month when payroll is being closed.

What does a departing employee still hold the keys to?

Most owners picture email and the shared drive. Those matter, but they are the small half. Through Corppass, a staff member may still reach:

• CPF e-Submission, which is your payroll money
• IRAS myTax Portal, which covers GST and corporate tax filings
• MOM services, including work pass applications and renewals
• ACRA BizFile, where your company's own particulars sit
• The Business Grants Portal, where PSG and EDG claims are submitted
• Customs and licensing services, if you import or hold a licence

Sitting alongside that, and outside Corppass entirely, is a second list that tends to be forgotten: corporate bank access and payment approval rights, PayNow corporate, the accounting system, marketplace seller centres, advertising accounts holding a saved card, the WhatsApp Business number, the social accounts, and the shared password manager.

The practical test is simple. Ask yourself what a person who left on bad terms could do in forty minutes with the access they had on their last day. If the answer includes moving money, filing something in your company's name, or downloading a customer list, that access needs to end on the day.

Why is October the month to fix this?

Resignations cluster in the last quarter. People move after bonus discussions, before the new school year, or at the end of a project. At the same time you are bringing in temporary and part-time staff for peak trading, which means more new logins being created in a hurry by whoever is free. The two trends collide in November and December, exactly when nobody has time to check a register.

The year-end grant queue adds a sharper edge. If a staff member who handled your PSG or EDG paperwork leaves in November while a claim is open, you need their access removed and someone else's access granted, in that order, without stalling the claim. Doing the groundwork in October is cheap. Doing it in the second week of December is not.

What should be switched off, and in what order?

Order matters because the first two steps stop a person from re-granting themselves anything.

1. Remove their Corppass role and every e-Service assigned to them.
2. Disable the company email account and sign them out of all active sessions.
3. Remove bank and payment approval rights, and check whether they were a required approver on anything pending.
4. Revoke access to the accounting system, the CRM and any shared drives.
5. Remove them from marketplace seller centres and advertising accounts, then check no saved payment method is personally theirs.
6. Transfer the WhatsApp Business number and any social account logins.
7. Revoke the password manager seat and rotate any password that was genuinely shared.
8. Collect the devices, keys and any authenticator app tied to a company account.

For a company of ten to thirty people, this is a twenty minute job if the list exists and a half-day scramble if it does not.

What if the person leaving is your only Corppass admin?

This is the expensive version. If the sole admin walks out, your company can lose the ability to grant anyone access at all, and recovering it means a fresh registration involving the business owner or a director. That is days, not minutes, and it will happen while a filing deadline is running.

The fix is to have at least two admins at all times, with one of them being an owner or director who is not going to resign. Treat that as a standing arrangement, not something you set up when a resignation letter lands. Check it this month, while nothing is on fire.

Who should own this in a company with no IT team?

Attach it to final pay. The person who releases the last salary payment does not release it until the access checklist is signed off. That single rule works better than any policy document because it ties the task to a payment somebody genuinely cares about, and it gives you a dated record that the removal happened.

Keep an access register alongside it: one row per person, one column per system, updated whenever someone joins or leaves. A spreadsheet is enough. What you are buying is the ability to answer, in one minute, the question of who can reach what.

What does it cost you to skip this?

Three costs, in rising order of pain. First, the clean-up cost of a rushed removal once you realise it was missed, usually a few hours of someone senior. Second, the real exposure: a work pass application or a bank payee changed by someone no longer on your payroll, or a customer list downloaded on the way out, which becomes a personal data problem you have to report and explain. Third, the audit problem. When a larger customer or an insurer asks how you control access, or when something has to be traced, every action sits under the name of a person who left. You cannot prove what happened, and that uncertainty is itself the finding.

None of this requires software you do not already own. It requires a list, two admins instead of one, and a rule that ties access removal to final pay.

Frequently asked questions

Can we cancel a former employee's Singpass so they cannot log in?

No. Singpass is their personal identity and it stays with them. What you control is the Corppass access your company granted on top of it. Remove the role and the assigned e-Services, and their personal login no longer opens anything belonging to your business.

How quickly should access be removed after someone resigns?

On the last working day, before they leave the premises. If the departure is contentious or the person had payment approval or customer data access, remove it at the point of notice and give them read-only working access for the remainder.

We use an accounting firm or corporate service provider for our filings. Does this still apply?

Yes, and it needs an extra step. Confirm in writing which of your e-Services the provider holds, under whose name, and what happens when their staff change. Their offboarding is not visible to you, so ask for it to be stated rather than assumed.