List of banks in Singapore

Commercial banks

Commercial banks in Singapore may undertake universal banking, such as the taking of deposits and the provision of cheque services and lending, as well any other business authorised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, including financial advisory services, insurance brokering and capital market services, as long as they are permitted under section 30 of the Banking Act. Since 18 July 2001, banks were no longer permitted to engage in non-financial activities.

Local Banks

In a bid to encourage consolidation of the local banking industry to form larger banking conglomerates better able to regionalise and compete with foreign banks, the government liberalised the banking sector by awarding greater liberty for foreign banks to operate in Singapore in 2001. Since then, the number of local full banks has shrunk by more than half to four today.

Full banks

There are presently five locally incorporated full banks in Singapore, owned by three banking groups. These full banks have the liberty to provide any financial service as permitted by the Banking Act.

Digital full banks

There are currently three local digital banks with full bank licence in Singapore. Trust Bank was jointly launched by FairPrice Group and Standard Chartered Bank on 1 September 2022. GXS Bank is owned by Grab and Singtel. MariBank is owned by Sea Ltd.

Defunct banks

Foreign banks

There are presently 119 foreign commercial banks in Singapore, of which 28 are Full banks, 54 are Wholesale banks, and 37 are Offshore banks.

Full banks

Although foreign banks with full bank licences can also offer most commercial banking services to clients compared to local banks, they are restricted in terms of number of branches and automated teller machines.

Qualifying full banks

Liberalisation of the banking sector saw the government creating a new category under the foreign banks category, called the Qualifying Full Bank (QFB). The first four licences were awarded on 20 October 1999 to ABN AMRO, Banque Nationale De Paris (now BNP Paribas), Citibank (transferred to newly locally incorporated Citibank Singapore on 28 June 2004) and Standard Chartered Bank. Two new licences were issued in December 2001 as part of the second phase of bank liberalisation, namely to the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and Maybank Singapore. These QFBs are permitted to operate up to 15 service locations.

In June 2004, the QFB licence was further liberalised. QFBs are permitted to establish up to 25 service locations of which up to 10 can be branches from 1 January 2005. These banks were permitted to share their ATM networks (this was achieved with five of the QFBs through atm5), and provide services via the EFTPOS network from 1 July 2002. On the same day, they are also permitted to provide the Central Provident Fund's Supplementary Retirement Scheme and Investment Scheme accounts and to accept CPF fixed deposits. In 2012, MAS announced new changes to the QFB scheme, requiring QFBs who are "important to the domestic market to locally incorporate their retail operations". Further, such QFBs, whose home countries have Free Trade Agreements with Singapore, will be able to operate up to 50 places of business.

Wholesale banks

Wholesale bank licences were first issued in December 2001 to replace the "Restricted Bank (RB)" licence as a reflexion of greater services which may be conducted by these banks. These banks may conduct the same range of services as full banks, except that they do not deal with banking activities in the Singapore Dollar, and can only have one main branch.

Offshore banks

Retail banks in Singapore by total assets (as of 2024)

This list includes only banks that provide retail banking services in Singapore through independent corporate entities. It excludes branches of overseas banks (e.g., BOC Singapore Branch) and considers only the assets held within the Singapore entity (may includes any overseas branches operated by that entity). Assets held by overseas subsidiaries or independent entities (e.g., DBS Hong Kong) are not included.

Merchant banks

The typical activities of merchant banks include corporate finance, underwriting of share and bond issues, mergers and acquisitions, portfolio investment management, management consultancy, personal banking and other fee-based activities. Merchant banks may not accept sight or savings deposits or borrow from the public. However, they may accept deposits or borrow from banks, finance companies, shareholders and companies controlled by their shareholders.

Representative offices of banks

• Citibank International Personal Bank Singapore

Notes

References

1. "Types of Deposit-Taking Institutions".
2. "Financial Institutions Directory". Monetary Authority of Singapore.
3. "Financial Institutions Directory".
4. CHER, BENJAMIN. (2022-09-01). "Singapore's first digital bank Trust Bank launches".
5. (5 February 2011). "Bank of Singapore renamed Singapore Island Bank".
6. (31 August 2017). "Far Eastern Bank completes merger with UOB".
7. "Archived copy".
8. Yasmine Yahya. (15 September 2015). "DBS to wind down Islamic banking unit".
9. "Company Profile - Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore". Institute of Banking and Finance.
10. "Wholesale banking licence for EFG in Singapore". Channel NewsAsia.
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