The Address Change Problem
Published on December 21, 2025
The past few months have been hectic. I was drawn once again into the chaos of moving house, and it reminded me that moving has two brutally hard parts:
- The physical move - finding a new home, signing agreements, and hauling everything you own from one place to another.
- The address change marathon - updating your address in more places than you can count.
This time, I kept a tally. By the end, I had updated my address in 25 separate places: 4 banks, 3 insurance providers, 2 pension funds, 6 subscription services, my employer, the electoral register, DVLA, HMRC, my GP, my dentist, council tax, water, gas, electricity, and a handful of others I’ve probably already forgotten.
Each one required logging in (or recovering a forgotten password), navigating to settings, finding the address field, and hoping the form would accept my postcode. Some demanded proof of address. A few required phone calls. One sent me a physical letter to confirm the change,to my old address.
This is absurd. We live in an era of instant bank transfers and real-time flight tracking, yet changing your address still feels like a task from the 90s.
What If We Could Change Our Address Once?
I started thinking: why is this so hard in the digital age? What would a smooth address-change experience look like,one where I update my address in a single place, and every organisation subscribed to my address pulls the change automatically?
Here’s a system that could make this work(just a thought), the system would have three components:
1. A Government managed Address Registry
The government already requires the address for driving licences, vehicle registration, council tax, electoral registration, and more. A central registry, managed by a trusted government entity, would store your address securely and act as the single source of truth. You update your address once, here, and that’s it.
This mirrors how successful data-sharing systems actually work. Estonia’s X-Road works similarly: data lives in government databases, and citizens control access. There’s no need for your address to live on your device; it just needs to be somewhere secure, with you controlling who can see it.
2. A Third-Party Integration Interface
Organisations, banks, utilities and employers would integrate with the registry through a standardised API. When you grant consent, they receive your current address. When you update your address, they receive the new one automatically.
3. A Consent Management Dashboard
You would have a single interface to manage all consents: who has access to your address, when that access expires, and the ability to revoke access at any time. This mirrors the Open Banking consent model, where registered providers request access, consents are time-bound, and users remain in control.
Your phone or laptop isn’t storing your address, it’s simply the tool you use to authenticate yourself and manage permissions. Lose your phone, and you can still log in from another device, just like online banking.
This Isn’t a New Idea
Similar systems already exist, and we can learn from them.
Estonia’s X-Road 1 is a government-managed data exchange layer that allows citizens to control how their data is shared between public and private entities. Estonians can see exactly who has accessed their data and when. The architecture I’m proposing borrows heavily from this model.
Open Banking 2 in the UK and EU has normalised consent-based data sharing in the financial sector. Users grant access, providers are vetted, and consent can be revoked. The same principles apply here.
This isn’t a simple problem to solve. Here are the challenges and how the system might address them:
1. Privacy
Some people are uncomfortable sharing their address with a central government entity. But consider the alternative: we already share our address with dozens of independent organisations, each with varying security practices and no unified audit trail. A consent based registry would actually improve privacy by giving users visibility into who has access and the ability to revoke it. You’d see exactly which companies have your address and when they last accessed it, something impossible today.
2. Security
The registry would need robust security, but this is a solved problem. Government systems already protect sensitive data (tax records, health information, benefits data). The key additions here are:
- Strong authentication: Multi-factor authentication to access and update your address
- Provider vetting: Organisations requesting access would be registered and vetted by the governing body, similar to how Open Banking accredits third-party providers
- Audit trails: Every access logged and visible to you
- Encryption: Data encrypted at rest and in transit
3. Adoption
Perhaps the biggest challenge is incentivising adoption. Why would a small business integrate with this system? What’s the migration path for existing accounts?
Government mandates could drive initial adoption in the public sector, if you already update your address with HMRC, DVLA, and the electoral register, this system could unify those interactions. Private sector adoption would likely follow if the system reduces their administrative burden and improves data quality. Financial incentives, regulatory nudges, or simply consumer demand could accelerate this.
4. International Addresses
For expatriates or those with addresses in multiple countries, the system would need to handle international formats and potentially integrate with foreign registries. This adds complexity but isn’t insurmountable, many global systems already handle multi-country data.
5. Address History
Some use cases, credit checks, background verification, rental applications, require your previous addresses. The system would need to maintain an address history (with your consent) and allow you to share historical records when required.
The Building Blocks Already Exist
The technology for this system isn’t speculative. We have:
- Government identity infrastructure (in many countries)
- Standardised APIs for data exchange (see Open Banking, OAuth)
- Consent management frameworks with legal backing (GDPR)
- Proven models in Estonia that demonstrate this can work at national scale
What’s missing is the coordination: a trusted entity to manage the registry, incentives for third parties to integrate, and a user experience simple enough for mass adoption.
Moving house will always be stressful. But the administrative aftermath, the endless address updates, the forgotten accounts, the letters sent to the wrong place, doesn’t have to be.
A system where you update once and changes propagate everywhere, is technically feasible. The building blocks exist. Estonia has proven that government-managed data exchange can work. Open Banking has shown that consent-based data sharing can be secure, user-friendly, and widely adopted.
This won’t happen overnight. It requires political will, cross-sector coordination, and careful attention to privacy and security.
If you’ve ever lost an important letter because you forgot to update your address somewhere, you know exactly what I mean.