ANEXT Bank Business Loan. Not your typical bank loan review.

ANEXT Bank is a digital wholesale bank based in Singapore, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant International. Regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) since 2022, it primarily serves small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with a range of digital financial services.

If you search “ANEXT Bank business loan” online, you’ll likely find it featured across the same major comparison websites that list banks like DBS, OCBC, and Trust Bank. Each promises convenience — “fully digital,” “instant approval,” and “as low as” rates — but the pattern is the same: these sites are optimized to capture clicks, not to give borrowers the full picture.

So, instead of giving you a review about ANEXT Bank's business loan, we are going to do you one better. By letting you know exactly how these comparison websites really work. So you wouldn't be shortchanged any further. 

Not all review sites are what they claim to be—many are nothing more than sponsored listing sites, serving the advertisers that pay them, not you.

Across markets from the U.S. to Australia, regulators are finding that these platforms very often prioritize results based on the highest payment, not on what’s truly best for the customer or consumer. And what you see isn’t always an unbiased comparison but a filtered list bought by those who pay the most. From shopping comparisons to insurance comparisons, they are starting to come under scrutiny, and some Singaporeans have already found out the hard way.

Credit: Public review found on Seedly, another so-called comparison website.

While general information, such as miles or points per dollar spent, is easy to research, loan amounts and interest rates are highly personal. They change from one borrower to another based on each individual’s credit score & profile. That rate they “reviewed” or “compared” for you is actually a teaser rate. Here’s how it works in detail.

Regulators in multiple jurisdictions have initiated legal actions or issued warnings against clickbaiting websites or advertising disguised as a comparison. In the article above, we’ve included examples—ranging from the U.S. FTC to Australia’s MoneySmart, their equivalent of Singapore’s MoneySense. And yes, it’s ironically called MoneySmart too!

But if you are pressed for time, you don’t have to read the article above; here is an image that says it all. One such comparison website accidentally called itself out by showing a TrustBank 2.22% teaser rate while condemning such rates as misleading!

Credit: Head of Lendingpot. 

Still not sure if you should stop trusting comparison websites? Well, we think Trust Bank would at least think twice!

UK regulation dictates that 51% of customers get the advertised rate. Singapore hasn’t set such a standard yet. And rates alone don’t tell the story—loan size and tenure matter too. A 1% rate sounds attractive, but not if it’s only on $500 when you need $5,000, correct? Or if you only have one week's tenure to pay up if you need $100,000, right? What is the point of telling you up to $500,000 if you only qualify for $1,000, right?

But here’s the real concern—by trusting a loan “comparison” platform and choosing its top pick without shopping around, you could have easily overpaid by thousands. Another bank might have been willing to lend at a much cheaper rate. See the article above where we break down exactly how this happens.

And that’s why we built FindTheLoan.com, Singapore’s 1st loan marketplace and a startup funded by Enterprise Singapore's Startup SG Founder. Instead of teaser rates or applying with multiple lenders separately, you can, in just a few minutes, reach many lenders at once with your actual documents. They’ll make a full credit assessment as if you had gone to them individually, then return with their actual offer neatly displayed on your dashboard, so you can easily Find The Loan you need.

These are not small players but multinational companies and even subsidiaries of listed companies. And these aren’t isolated cases — they highlight a systemic issue within the loan industry, also evident among other loan intermediaries like MoneySmart, Lendingpot, Lendela, Roshi, and SingSaver.

"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything",  Albert Einstein

If you think it is time to speak up, you can add your voice on TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn or Facebook. More voices increase the chance that policymakers finally act, and we have tagged a number of them on LinkedIn. Those that have spoken about stronger consumer protections and safeguards for borrowers. Every comment, repost, or show of support counts. So consider helping other Singaporeans in learning this by taking a second to click share on any of the social media channels that you use. 

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We’ve also published an in-depth post on loan brokers and what to watch out for when using them—another area where regulators in Singapore still lag behind despite decades of oversight in the US and UK.

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