AI trading in Singapore: MAS checks and cross-border reality

Search the exact legal entity in the MAS Financial Institutions Directory. You are checking three things: that the entity appears, that it holds the right kind of licence or exemption for what it is offering, and that the entity name matches the one on the contract and the payment instruction.

Being "regulated by MAS" for one activity does not extend to every activity. A digital payment token licence is not a capital markets services licence, and neither is a licence to give you a discretionary AI-managed trading account.

The Investor Alert List names entities that are not licensed or regulated by MAS but may have been mistaken as such. It is one of the most useful public lists in the region precisely because it targets the specific confusion offshore platforms cultivate.

As with every alert list, absence is not endorsement. Presence, however, is decisive.

MoneySense is Singapore’s national financial education programme, and ScamShield is the national anti-scam resource and reporting channel. Both publish current investment-scam patterns, including AI-themed offers, job-and-invest hybrids and messaging-app "mentor" groups.

The recurring Singapore pattern in 2026 is the closed chat group: a legitimate-looking analyst, daily commentary, small early withdrawals that succeed, then a larger deposit that cannot be withdrawn. Recognising the shape of it is worth more than any single brand check.

Singapore’s regulatory framework distinguishes Specified Investment Products — complex instruments such as derivatives and structured products — from simpler ones. Before a retail client can transact in an SIP, the intermediary is generally required to assess whether the client has the relevant knowledge or experience, and to explain the product where they do not.

This is a genuinely useful signal. If a platform lets you jump straight into leveraged derivatives with no assessment step at all, ask yourself which regime it thinks it is operating under.

Check which entity accepts Singapore residents, and in which currency your balance is held. A global brand may serve Singapore through an entity licensed elsewhere — or through one licensed nowhere. If the contracting entity is offshore, MAS-supervised protections and local dispute channels generally do not apply, regardless of how the website is worded.

Where an SGD balance is converted to USD for trading, currency movement becomes part of your result. Read the conversion spread as carefully as the trading spread.