Hiring a transfer helper in Singapore: what to check
A transfer helper is already in Singapore, already trained in the practical sense, and available in weeks rather than months. It also comes with one question you cannot avoid, which is why the last placement ended, and that question is harder to answer honestly than it looks.
Administratively a transfer is much like any hire, with three differences: no Settling-in Programme, different levy timing, and the current employer has to agree to release her. A new 5,000 dollar security bond and new insurance in your name are still required.
The part that decides the outcome is the conversation about why the last placement ended. You will get three accounts of it, from her, the previous employer and the agency, and they will not match.
Most people searching for this type the word maid, so if that is how you found this page, you are in the right place.
What is different, administratively
Most of the process is the same as any hire, so start there: eligibility, the Employers' Orientation Programme if it is your first time, insurance, security bond, work permit. The full hiring route
No Settling-in Programme. It is required for helpers working in Singapore for the first time. A transfer helper has already done it. (MOM, Settling-in Programme for first-time migrant domestic workers, page last updated 1 September 2025.)
Levy timing differs. The five day rule applies to first-time arrivals. Check your own start date against the current MOM guidance rather than assuming. (MOM, paying levy for a migrant domestic worker, page last updated 8 July 2026.)
A new security bond is still needed, 5,000 dollars as a banker's or insurer's guarantee, waived for Malaysian helpers, and new insurance in your name. (MOM, security bond requirements, page last updated 2 February 2026, and MOM, insurance requirements, page last updated 1 July 2025.) The previous employer's arrangements do not transfer.
Her age still matters. Applications are for women aged 23 to under 50, or 23 to under 58 if she is Malaysian. Above that she can only have an existing permit renewed, up to 60. (MOM, can I hire an MDW aged 50 and above, checked 10 September 2026.) (MOM, migrant domestic worker eligibility, page last updated 14 March 2024.)
Consent to transfer. The current employer must agree to release her and the paperwork sequence matters. Confirm the current requirements at mom.gov.sg before you commit to a date, because getting this order wrong is the most common cause of a transfer stalling.
If she is Philippine and this is a new contract, the terms set by DMW Advisory No. 25, Series of 2025 apply from 21 October 2025, including the 650 dollar monthly minimum and contract verification with the Migrant Workers Office. Renewal with the same employer is treated differently from a new employer, and you are a new employer. (Migrant Workers Office Singapore.)
The conversation about why the last job ended
This is the whole thing. Everything else is forms.
You will get three accounts of the same events: hers, the previous employer's, and the agency's. They will not match. That is normal and it is not evidence of dishonesty by anyone, because the three of them were in different positions and are describing different parts of it.
What to ask her
Tell me about the household you are leaving. Who was in it, what was your day. Start neutral and specific. You are establishing the shape of the job before you get to the ending.
What worked well there? Ask this before you ask what did not. It gives you a picture of her at her best, and it tells you what kind of household suits her.
What was the hardest part? Then wait. The pause is the question.
How did the two of you handle it when something was not working? This is the most predictive question on the page. What you are listening for is whether there was any mechanism at all. If the answer is that she was told when something was wrong and otherwise nothing was said, you have learned that her last placement had no feedback structure, which is the most common reason placements end and has nothing to do with her.
What would you want to be different here? Concrete answers are good. This is the question where the terms that matter to her surface, and it is much cheaper to hear them now.
What to ask the previous employer
Ask for the conversation, and take it if offered. Then keep it factual, because the useful information is structural and the rest is one person's account of a relationship you were not in.
Useful: how long she worked there, what her duties were, what the household consisted of, what her rest day arrangement was, whether there were any work permit issues, and whether they would employ her again.
Less useful: character assessments, comparisons to previous helpers, and anything phrased as a general statement about people. An employer who describes a two year working relationship entirely in terms of the other person's character has told you a great deal, though not about the helper.
Ask: what did you find you had to explain more than once? It is not a loaded question, most people answer it honestly, and the answer is a direct instruction for your own first fortnight.
What to ask the agency
Ask what they know as fact and what they were told, and keep the two apart. Ask whether any placement fee is still outstanding against her and to whom, because that decides what her first months of salary actually look like, and a helper repaying an agency is a helper who cannot afford to say anything is wrong.
For Philippine workers no placement fee may be charged to her at all, and no deduction may be made from her salary to recover recruitment or placement costs under any label, including where it is called a loan or an advance. (Migrant Workers Office Singapore.)
For other corridors the Singapore fee cap applies to what an agency charges her, not to what it charges you. No more than one month of her fixed monthly salary for each year of service, capped at two months in total. Anything above that is unlawful. (MOM FAQ on what workers pay the Singapore agency, page last updated 3 July 2024.)
And one that is money back to you. If the placement ends within her first six months, the agency must refund you at least half the service fees you paid. MOM sets the conditions that disqualify you, and there are five: engaging the agency for administrative work only rather than for matching, breaching employment law or committing an offence against her, failing to tell the agency in reasonable time before you cancel the permit, having already had two replacements where one lasted beyond six months or three replacements in total, and no longer needing a caregiver because the person she was hired to care for has died or moved away. An agency does not get to add conditions of its own on top of those. The one that catches most people is the third: tell them before you cancel, not after. Ask them to put their refund terms in writing now, while they still want your business. (MOM, Refund of EA service fee, page last updated 18 September 2024, and MOM press reply of 26 June 2025.)
How to read what you hear
A placement that ended is a placement that ended. It is not by itself information about her, and the market's habit of treating it as a mark against the helper is the same error the research points at.
So the question worth asking is not whether she was the problem. It is what the structure around her was, and whether yours will be different. If the previous household had no job description, no agreed standard and no check-in, then you have learned something about that household, and you have been handed a fairly precise brief for what to do differently.
The one advantage you have, and the trap in it
She can start soon and she already knows how things work in Singapore.
The trap is that this makes it feel unnecessary to onboard her. She is experienced, she has done this before, so she is simply shown the flat and started. Two months later the friction begins, over things neither of you named, because she is working to the last household's standards and you are assessing against yours, and both of you believe the standard is obvious.
An experienced transfer helper needs the onboarding more than a first-timer does, not less, because she arrives with a fully formed picture of how a household runs and it is not yours. The first fortnight is where you find the differences deliberately rather than discovering them by accident in month three.
Build the questions before you meet her.
A transfer interview is short and you usually get one. The tool turns what matters in your household into a question set you can print and take into the call, including the ones that get past an answer she has given before.
Free, no account, nothing stored. It runs in your own browser.
The workbook
Everything above this point is a hiring decision, and Book 1 is the hiring book. The interview set, the reference conversation, the questions that predict nothing and why, the offer terms, the corridor rules, and the cost model for the first year. A transfer changes some of the figures. It does not change the method.
Hiring a Domestic Helper in Singapore. The Shared Standard, Book 1. Read more
Book 2 picks it up once she has accepted, with the onboarding fortnight and a section on starting that fortnight late, which is where most transfer hires find themselves.
Figures on this page were checked on 10 September 2026 against the sources named. Requirements and fees change. Check the source before you rely on a number.