Bank of China (BOC) SME loan - Not your usual product review.

You probably wanted to understand how Bank of China's loan works, how much it charge, or how quickly they can respond. And you were searching online when you found this article. Unfortunately, as explained here, it doesn’t work that way — many of these details remain unknown until you actually apply. Although MAS issued the Guidelines on Standards of Conduct for Digital Advertising Activities in September, we find them still lacking in scope. In the UK, any advertised 1% or 1-hour loan must apply to at least 51% of borrowers — not so here. What’s worse are intermediaries unaffiliated with banks yet feeding them leads. And this is why you need to read this article.

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

Credit: Public review found on Seedly and Google

Across markets from the U.S. to Australia, regulators are finding that these platforms often prioritize results based on payment, not on what’s truly best for the customer or consumer. What you see isn’t always an unbiased comparison, but a filtered list bought by those who pay the most.

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 customer 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. They are rates that you may or may not get, and in many countries, regulators are either suing them for clickbaiting consumers or publishing warnings on them.

But if you are pressed for time, you don’t have to read the article above - even they admitted it themselves. See if you can catch it!

Credit: Head of Lendingpot. Strangely enough, Lendingpot appears to be exposing its own practices. For more of their contradiction or to join the conversation, click here. Interestingly, after we raised the conflict of interest of lender-owned brokers, they made the same point months later—despite being owned by IFS Capital & PhilipCapital. Blindly copying our articles? Perhaps it’s just coincidence, but the overlap is hard to miss.

Credit: Public review found on Seedly and Google

Every now and then, you’ll see them write comparisons like “this loan vs. that loan.” But think about it—if they claim to compare 10 loans, did they really take all 10 and pay interest on each one?

By law in the UK, at least 51% of customers must enjoy the quoted rate. Singapore has no similar law. And even if the rate is genuine, what about the loan amount or tenure? A 1% rate for $500 is of little use if you need $5,000 right? So being clickbaited, only to find out days later is no fun, right? The real issue, however, comes when you use a loan “comparison” website and just take the recommended loan. Without comparing further, you could pay thousands extra—since another bank could have offered a far lower rate. We’ve explained this in detail in the article above. 

These cases point to a wider, recurring problem in the loan comparison ecosystem — one echoed by platforms like Lendela, Lendingpot, Roshi, and SingSaver, as our investigation has found.

And thus we built FindTheLoan.com, Singapore’s 1st loan hub. Instead of teaser rates or applying with multiple lenders one by one, you can reach multiple lenders at once with your actual documents, and they will make a full credit assessment as if you had walked in to them individually, and they will revert with their actual offer. Learn more about us, how we are different, and what industry players say about us from our homepage. 

"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 something doesn’t look right, we invite you to share your thoughts on this LinkedIn post or on our Reddit, TikTok, or Facebook post, if you prefer. However, we have tagged a number of MPs on LinkedIn who, during parliament, have asked about matters such as greater consumer protections. Weighing in there, and as more people share their thoughts there, could finally catch their attention to do something about the industry and better protect borrowers. Every comment, repost, or show of support matters — it increases the chances that policymakers take notice and act. MoneySmart says it attracts 60 million visitors across Southeast Asia — a reach many lenders and investors continue to amplify despite its track record of misleading ads. We can’t stop their funding, but we can call it out together.

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We also wrote about loan brokers and what to watch out for when using them—a topic where Singapore still lags behind older financial systems like those in the US and UK.

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