Anext Bank doubles customer base, grows cross-border transactions by 6x

Photo credit: Anext Bank

Anext Bank, a digital wholesale bank in Singapore and an Ant Group subsidiary, said that it more than doubled its customer base over the past year. That led to a 6x year-on-year increase in cross-border transactions, the digibank added.

This growth was driven by MSMEs in sectors such as wholesale and retail trade, professional services, and information technology. The bank said that its Singapore clients have expanded beyond the city-state and into markets like mainland China, Hong Kong, the US, and other parts of Southeast Asia.

“Internationalization is no longer a growth strategy limited to large corporations,” said Toh Su Mei, Anext Bank’s CEO, in a statement. “Through technology and innovation, MSMEs can now easily access global markets.”

In the statement, Anext said that it also saw an uptick in the number of Singapore-incorporated clients that are owned by non-Singaporeans. They make up about 31% of the bank’s clients and are from 78 nationalities, including mainland Chinese, Indonesians, and South Koreans.

Ant Group set up Anext Bank in 2022 after winning a digital wholesale bank license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore two years prior. The bank recently received US$148 million in fresh capital from its parent company, which added to the US$188 million that the digibank received from Ant Group in March last year.

According to the bank, there was a 434% surge in volume of customer loans, which reached US$165 million in the 2023 financial year. Deposits also rose by 368% to US$219 million in the same period.