State Bank of India (SBI) Personal Loan - - Not your usual product review.

You might have wanted to learn how the their loan process works, how are their charges, or how fast they reply. You were trying to find it online when you found this article. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way, as explained here. Although MAS introduced the Guidelines on Standards of Conduct for Digital Advertising Activities in September, they still fall short. In the UK, 1% or 1-hour loans must apply to at least 51% of borrowers — something not enforced here. More concerning are the intermediaries generating leads for banks. And this is why you need to read this article.

State Bank of India (SBI) Personal Loan. As we have seen so many “comparison” review sites or bloggers reviewing it, we thought we would chip in, but with a difference.

Did you know not all review sites are what they claim to be—many are nothing more than sponsored listing sites, serving the advertisers that pay them? See the screenshots we found for yourself.

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 very often 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 - here is an image that says it all. Showing you such rates while, in the very same article, admitting that they have been misleading you?

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.

What’s more, when we pointed out the conflict of interest of brokers owned by lenders, they echoed it months later—despite being owned by IFS Capital & PhilipCapital! So perhaps, they have been blindly copying our articles and thus these mistakes?

In the UK, at least 51% of customers must actually enjoy the quoted rate. Singapore, however, has no such law. And even if the rates are genuine, what about the loan amount or tenure? 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 20 loans, did they really take all 20 and pay interest on each one?

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.

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. 

What we’re seeing isn’t an exception — the same practices show up repeatedly among loan marketplaces such as Lendingpot, SingSaver, Roshi, and Lendela. Even with its 60 million Southeast Asian visitors, MoneySmart and such websites keep growing because lenders and investors enable them. That’s why we call for accountability — to stop misleading ads from being rewarded, and we hope you can join us in it.

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

Apart from comparison websites, we also wrote about loan brokers and what to watch out for when using them. Check it out here. Another area where regulators in Singapore have not acted, despite regulations existing in the UK and US for more than half a century.

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