Director privacy on ASIC

Recent changes to directors’ personal information shown in ASIC extracts

On 2 February 2026, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced that residential addresses would no longer appear on company extracts purchased through ASIC’s website. This reform comes in response to privacy and security concerns, particularly the increased risk to directors’ personal safety and the risk of identity theft. This does not mean that directors’ residential addresses are being removed from the register entirely – they are just no longer visible through the main public search tool.

However, this is not the same as suppressing a directors’ residential address from ASIC’s register entirely. Unless suppressed, residential addresses will still appear:

• if the director is also a shareholder of the company because shareholders’ residential addresses still appear on company extracts purchased through ASIC’s website;
• on copies of documents lodged with ASIC (including the form notifying ASIC of the director’s appointment) which may be purchased through ASIC’s website;
• in documents obtained by journalists via a special journalist portal; and
• on company extracts obtained from third-party information brokers; though, ASIC has said it is engaging with such data providers and other high-volume commercial users to ensure access to directors’ residential information is limited to legitimate business and legal use cases only.

If a director believes that the publication of their residential address could put at risk their safety or that of their family, the director may apply to ASIC to suppress their residential address. This is the primary mechanism to have residential address details withheld or redacted from publicly available documents on ASIC’s register.

Further action and reform

Longer-term reforms to the ASIC registers are being considered by the Government under the Treasury Laws Amendment (Business Registries Stabilisation and Uplift) Bill 2025 (Cth) (Draft Bill) which will eventually link Director Identification Numbers to the ASIC register.

Crucially, the Draft Bill proposes replacing directors’ residential addresses with an ‘address for service’. Where no address for service is provided, the residential address would remain accessible.

The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has indicated that early commencement of the relevant provisions regarding directors’ personal information in the Draft Bill may be considered due to recent heightened security concerns.