The MAS Financial Institutions Directory (FID) is an online directory on the website of the Monetary Authority of Singapore for finding financial institutions regulated by MAS in Singapore, the licenses they hold and the activities they are permitted to carry out. MAS describes the directory as a way to “Find a financial institution, licence or activity in Singapore”, meaning it can be searched by institution, license or activity.
The directory’s homepage also warns that scammers may impersonate MAS-regulated financial institutions. Before transferring money, you should verify the institution’s identity, deal only through official channels, and check its official contact details on the institution’s website or in the MAS Financial Institutions Directory.
Which Institutions Does the MAS Financial Institutions Directory Cover?
The directory groups regulated institutions into five sectors: Banking, Capital Markets, Financial Advisory, Insurance and Payments. Each sector is further broken down by license type or regulatory status, with the number of institutions shown for each category.
Take the figures shown on the directory homepage on 13 November 2026 as an example. Banking includes 6 local banks, 20 full banks, 96 wholesale banks and 21 merchant banks; Capital Markets includes 1,583 Capital Markets Services Licensees, 67 licensed trust companies and 79 recognised market operators; Financial Advisory includes 71 licensed financial advisers; and Payments includes 246 Major Payment Institutions (MPIs), 13 Standard Payment Institutions (SPIs) and 228 money-changing licensees. These figures change as licenses are granted and revoked, so the date of the search should be noted when citing them.
Besides licensed institutions, the directory also lists exempt categories, such as exempt capital markets services entities and exempt financial advisers, as well as categories such as designated payment system operators. For the crypto industry, digital payment token (DPT) service providers fall under Payments and are governed by the Payment Services Act.
How Do You Search and Filter the Directory?
The directory supports searching by institution name, as well as filtering by sector, license type and activity type. For example, selecting the “Major Payment Institution” license type and then adding the “Digital Payment Token Service” activity produces a list of licensed institutions permitted to provide digital payment token services.
Clicking into an individual institution’s detail page shows its license type, permitted activities, address, phone number and other information. An institution may hold several licenses at once, and the detail page lists them separately, so when verifying, check whether the specific activity falls within the permitted scope of the relevant license, not just whether the institution’s name appears.
The address and phone number on the detail page are also the basis for confirming that the party you are dealing with is who it claims to be. The notice on the directory homepage asks exactly this: verify an institution’s identity through its official contact details. If the contact details provided by the counterparty do not match the directory, further verification is needed.
What Can’t the Directory Tell You?
The directory lists only institutions regulated by MAS; it does not list entities that may be mistaken for being licensed. Those are published separately on MAS’s Investor Alert List, and MAS states that this list is not exhaustive, so not appearing on the Investor Alert List does not mean an entity is regulated.
Nor will the directory tell you whether someone is impersonating a licensed institution. An institution’s name appearing in the directory shows only that the institution is regulated, not that the party contacting you is that institution, which is why MAS asks people to check official contact details.
In addition, for businesses providing digital token services from Singapore to overseas customers, MAS stated in June 2025 that from 30 June 2025 it will generally not grant licenses for such business. The directory is therefore only the first step in checking whether an institution is MAS licensed, and the result should be verified together with other public information.
Conclusion
The MAS Financial Institutions Directory is the official starting point for finding regulated financial institutions in Singapore. It covers five sectors (Banking, Capital Markets, Financial Advisory, Insurance and Payments) and can be searched by institution name, license type and activity. When using it, check whether the specific activity falls within the scope of the license, and verify the counterparty’s identity using the official contact details in the directory. The directory does not cover unlicensed entities or impersonators; for these, judgments need to draw on other public information such as the Investor Alert List.
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