SINGAPORE (BLOOMBERG) - A consortium comprising Singapore-based fintech ADVANCE.AI, Hong Kong-listed financial services firm Sheng Ye Capital and Singapore-based PhillipCapital is the latest known contender for a wholesale digital banking licence.
It joins other bidders ranging from gaming company Razer, Grab Holdings and Chinese billionaire Jack Ma's Ant Financial in the race for the sought-after Singapore permits.
For the ADVANCE.AI consortium, the license bid is "an opportunity for us to impact an under-served segment", the company's chief marketing officer Mi Li said, confirming an earlier report in The Business Times. "Singapore SMEs often find it impossible to get the credit they need to grow their business."
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) unveiled plans last year to grant as many as five virtual bank licenses to boost competition and innovation, and is set to announce the winners in mid-2020. South-east Asia's digital lending market is expected to over quadruple to US$110 billion (S$148 billion) by 2025, according to a report by Bain & Co, Google and Temasek Holdings.
With the ADVANCE.AI consortium, there are five known and confirmed bids for the three wholesale bank licenses which allow the holders to serve SMEs and other corporate clients. They carry a lower capital requirement of $100 million and allow foreign entities to take a majority stake.
There are three known, confirmed bids for the two full bank licenses. The group includes Beyond Consortium, led by one of Asia's largest massage chair makers, V3 Group, and stored-value card company EZ-Link; Singapore-listed fintech firm iFast Corp; and Grab, one of South-east Asia's largest operators of online businesses from finance to ride-hailing. Their holders can take deposits from retail customers but need to have $1.5 billion in the capital and be Singaporean-controlled.
