Singapore’s digital banking battle in 6 charts

Profitability remains elusive for most of Singapore’s digital banks, but one has proven that it can be done sooner rather than later.

Green Link Digital Bank (GLDB) recorded US$12.5 million in net profit in 2025, only three years after its launch. This marks a positive upswing from the company’s net loss in the previous year, which was at US$3.9 million, and makes it the first digital bank in the city-state to hit full-year profit.

That timeline is on pace with how fast it took digital banks in Indonesia to achieve profitability. It’s also faster than the five to seven years it has taken most digital banks to hit breakeven.

Meanwhile, Trust Bank recorded the highest total income among its peers for the third consecutive year, reaching US$104.7 million in 2025. Its total income was nearly double its closest rival’s.

Unlike digital banking players in Indonesia and the Philippines, which mostly focus on consumer lending, digital banks in Singapore are increasingly targeting SMEs. For example, GXS and MariBank, both of which began by serving retail customers, have already ventured into business banking.

There’s commercial sense behind that. Of the five digital banks in the city-state, the two wholesale banks serving only businesses – GLDB and Anext Bank – lead in terms of profit, or how close they are to it. Despite widening year-on-year losses, Anext has the smallest net loss among all the other players that are still in the red.

GLDB reached profitability ahead of its peers, thanks to its focus on niche trade and supply chain finance that enabled it to deploy deposits more efficiently, says Tengfu Li, vice president for financial institution ratings at Moody’s Ratings.

Its niche positioning also gives it operating leverage with lower customer acquisition costs compared to peers like Trust Bank, GXS, and MariBank that serve retail customers, says Sarah Jane Mahmud, senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Trust Bank also hit net profitability for the month of March, though it still reported a net loss for the first quarter of 2026. The bank, which was established in partnership with Standard Chartered, attributed its profitability to its expanding offerings. On top of savings and loan products, it also offers credit cards, insurance, and investments.

Eager to get closer to the black, Anext is looking to scale its GPU financing product, which allows firms to obtain loans by using their AI hardware as collateral. This move aims to help capitalize on the hardware needs of Singapore businesses.

Still, the clock is ticking for digital banks in the city-state to achieve net profitability. As part of the digital banking application process to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, these players are expected to achieve net profitability five years into their operations, meaning the window is closing around 2027 or 2028.

Many digital banks are already integrating AI into their processes to improve operational efficiency.

Anext is using AI for its know-your-customer processing and in improving its credit assessment models. Trust Bank, meanwhile, revamped its customer-facing chatbot with generative AI, which handles simple product queries.

Last year, there was a significant improvement in all five players’ cost-to-income ratio, which measures their operational expenses against their operational income.

The industry, as a whole, also continues to attract depositors. Most players recorded double-digit growth in their deposits for 2025.

Cautious optimism for 2026