SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 1, 2024--
ANEXT Bank, a digital wholesale bank incorporated in Singapore and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant International, today announced its partnership with global asset management firm Schroders to lower investment barriers for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
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Through this partnership, ANEXT Bank will expand its product suite to include a selection of investment funds managed by Schroders, offering MSMEs more opportunities to grow their wealth alongside ANEXT Fixed Deposit, the bank’s existing investment product. The first fund from Schroders is expected to be available through ANEXT Bank by 1Q 2025, subject to regulatory approval.
Over 30% of ANEXT Bank’s customers are Foreign Business Owners (FBOs) from 78 nationalities, operating businesses incorporated in Singapore, while 69% are micro businesses. This expanded offering will allow a diverse global community of MSMEs to manage and grow funds with greater flexibility, while ensuring cash flow liquidity with no lock-in period required.
Despite the wide availability of financial products, many small business owners find it challenging to start investing due to high entry barriers and limited financial literacy. According to a recent survey 1 conducted by ANEXT Bank, four in five MSMEs have never purchased investment instruments. The top three barriers cited were a lack of excess liquidity, insufficient investment know-how, and limited suitable investment options.
Ms Eileen Chan, Director at Premium Orchids Singapore echoes the sentiment on investments: “As a small business owner, investing has never really been on my radar because I always thought it was only for larger companies with substantial capital. With ANEXT Bank’s new investment offerings, I’m excited about the opportunity to grow my bank balance, even with small amounts. For businesses like mine, every cent counts. This initiative also spares me the hassle of navigating the complexities of different investment options, allowing me to focus on running my business.”
The partnership between ANEXT Bank and Schroders is designed to make investments more inclusive, catering to the needs of small businesses. By leveraging secure APIs to facilitate seamless integration between ANEXT Bank’s online banking platform and Schroders’ products, the collaboration allows ANEXT Bank customers to conveniently access, manage, and track their investments directly within the platform.
ANEXT Bank and Schroders will also explore innovation to enhance investment access for MSMEs through asset tokenisation as well as sustainable investment solutions, supporting their sustainability journey. In addition, the two companies will collaborate to promote financial literacy among MSMEs, helping them better understand investments and wealth management, thereby lowering barriers to entry.
“The partnership with Schroders marks a significant milestone for ANEXT Bank as our first collaboration with a global partner. By combining the strengths of both companies, we are bringing greater value to MSMEs by making high-quality investment products more accessible and opening up the world of financial growth to small businesses. Leveraging Schroders’ leadership and decades of expertise in the investment space, alongside ANEXT Bank’s insights into MSMEs and tech-driven innovation, we are excited to take a holistic approach to driving financial inclusion. This includes not only offering innovative products but also providing knowledge and capacity-building to making financial services more inclusive and accessible to micro and growing businesses,” said Ms Toh Su Mei, CEO of ANEXT Bank.
“MSMEs are the backbone of Singapore’s economy, comprising 99% of its enterprises. We are excited to partner with ANEXT Bank to better serve this dynamic client segment. This marks our first partnership dedicated to supporting MSMEs by enabling them to start their investment journey and providing easy access to tailored educational investment content. By leveraging ANEXT Bank’s deep expertise in the MSME community alongside our best-in-class global investment capabilities, we aim to develop innovative solutions that will unlock new investment opportunities and address their evolving needs. This partnership exemplifies our commitment to financial inclusion and empowers MSMEs to thrive in a rapidly changing financial landscape,” said Ms Lily Choh, Head of South Asia and CEO, Schroders Singapore.
About ANEXT Bank
Incorporated in Singapore and regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, ANEXT Bank is a digital wholesale bank providing innovative digital financial services to empower local and regional micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to future-proof their businesses through digital adoption, sustainable practices and global expansion.
With embedded finance at the core of its strategy, ANEXT Bank is dedicated to accelerating fintech development and financial inclusion in the region. Adopting an open and collaborative approach, ANEXT Bank believes in joining hands with ecosystem partners to provide MSMEs with financial services that are accessible, effortless and secure.
ANEXT Bank has been recognised with numerous awards, including the “World’s Top FinTech Companies of 2024” by CNBC and Statista, “SBR Technology Excellence Awards 2024” in the Fintech - Banking category, and the “SME Partnership Initiative of the Year 2024” by Asian Banking & Finance Wholesale Banking Awards in the Singapore Domestic Bank category.
ANEXT Bank is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant International. For more information on ANEXT Bank, please visit www.ANEXT.com.sg.
Schroders plc
Schroders is a global investment management firm with £773.7 billion (€912.6 billion; $978.1 billion) assets under management, as at 30 June 2024. Schroders continues to deliver strong financial results in ever challenging market conditions, with a market capitalisation of circa £6 billion and over 6,000 employees across 38 locations. Established in 1804, the founding family remains a core shareholder, holding approximately 44% of Schroders’ shares.
Schroders has benefited from a diverse business model by geography, asset class and client type. It offers innovative products and solutions across four core businesses; Public Markets, Solutions, Wealth Management and our private markets business Schroders Capital. Clients include insurance companies, pension schemes, sovereign wealth funds, high net worth individuals and foundations. Schroders also manages assets for end clients as part of its relationships with distributors, financial advisers and online platforms.
Schroders aims to provide excellent investment performance to clients through active management. It also channels capital into sustainable and durable businesses to accelerate positive change in the world. Schroders’ business philosophy is based on the belief that if we deliver for clients, we will deliver for our shareholders and other stakeholders.
ANEXT Bank and Schroders plant seeds of growth to mark the partnership (Left: Ms Lily Choh, Head of South Asia and CEO, Schroders Singapore; Right: Ms Toh Su Mei, CEO, ANEXT Bank) (Photo: Business Wire)
WASHINGTON (AP) — When acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed off on a nearly $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate President Donald Trump's allies for alleged political prosecution, he may have pleased his boss.
But the eyebrow-raising move — the latest in his push to prove his loyalty to Trump — has agitated the same Republican lawmakers he would need to secure the permanent job.
Blanche insists he’s not auditioning for the job of attorney general. But a succession of splashy steps the Justice Department has taken under his watch since he took the position on an acting basis last month, including an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, has left no doubt about the impression he’s hoping to make on the president who appointed him.
The fund in particular has put Blanche at the center of a Republican firestorm at a time when he aims to establish himself as the perfect person for the job for the remainder of Trump’s term. And it sharpened concerns from Democrats and other Blanche critics that he has not shed his mantle as the president’s personal attorney.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — Take your pick,” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader, said in a statement.
A former federal prosecutor in New York, Blanche came to public prominence for his lead role on Trump's defense team, including during the Republican's hush money trial in New York. That perch afforded him, he has said, a firsthand look at what he contends was the weaponization of the criminal justice system against Trump.
He was brought into the Justice Department as deputy attorney general, the No. 2 job, then was elevated last month after Trump ousted Pam Bondi.
Now he finds himself the latest Trump-appointed attorney general to simultaneously confront expectations from subordinates to uphold institutional norms and demands from the president to do his bidding.
Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was forced out after the 2018 midterms after infuriating the president over his recusal from an investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign. Another, William Barr, resigned after their relationship fizzled over Barr's refusal to back Trump's baseless claims of massive election fraud. Bondi was removed after struggling to bring successful prosecutions against Trump's political opponents.
Two weeks after becoming acting attorney general, Blanche announced the appointment of Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old former Justice Department prosecutor from the Reagan administration, to a special position inside the department. He'll oversee a Florida-based investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired over the last decade to undermine Trump.
“At some point, at the right time, that will be made public and the American people will see exactly what happened to this administration and President Trump over the past decade," Blanche told Fox News.
Prior government reviews of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, a centerpiece of the current conspiracy investigation, have failed to produce criminal charges against senior officials or evidence of criminal conduct by them. It's not clear what, if any, new information the continuing investigation has developed.
The Justice Department also last month obtained an indictment charging Comey, a Trump foe whose prosecution the president has long called for, with threatening Trump through a social media photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47" — a case legal experts say will be challenging for prosecutors. Comey has said he wouldn't be surprised if the Justice Department pursues additional indictments.
In other moves, Blanche announced an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that has been the target of conservative outrage, with misleading donors about its activities, and has publicly defended a Justice Department crackdown on leaks to the news media, including subpoenas to reporters.
Arguably the most audacious demonstration of loyalty to Trump came this week when the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people who feel they've been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, coupled with a guarantee of immunity from tax audits for Trump and his eldest sons.
As Republican concerns grew, Blanche held a tense meeting with GOP lawmakers Thursday. Shortly afterward, Senate Republicans abruptly left Washington without voting on a roughly $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies.
Blanche, who defended the fund at a congressional hearing this week, has said anyone who believes they've been persecuted can apply for compensation regardless of political affiliation. But the fund has been widely understood as a boon to Trump allies investigated during the Biden administration.
“It’s pretty clear that he’s not the attorney general for the United States as much as he's the attorney general for President Trump,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and senior Justice Department official in the 1980s. He said Blanche would get an A+ if report cards were issued for fealty to Trump.
David Laufman, a former chief of staff to the deputy attorney general in President George W. Bush's administration, said that rather than protecting the Justice Department's independence, Blanche has been a “willing and ardent accomplice for carrying out any partisan or corrupt scheme the White House may devise.”
Blanche’s supporters dismiss the suggestion he is trying to curry favor with Trump to secure the permanent job.
“What he is doing is he is seeking justice based on facts and the law,” said Jay Town, who served as a U.S. attorney in Alabama during the first Trump administration. “And I don’t think that will ever change about him, whether he is the attorney general going forward or doesn’t spend another day in the administration. He is an honorable man and anybody that knows him knows that to be true.”
Blanche also says he is not angling to keep his job or feeling pressure to placate Trump.
He has told reporters he would be honored to be nominated but, "if he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’ I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.”
In recent days, he's functioned as the fund's public face and most visible defender, a role consistent with his comfort in the spotlight. He sometimes holds multiple press conferences a week and grants interviews to a variety of news outlets, a contrast to Bondi, who largely stuck to Fox News appearances.
His defenders say his experience as a federal prosecutor has made him a more sophisticated communicator for the department than Bondi, but his statements have at times invited backlash, including his refusal to rule out that violent Jan. 6 rioters could be eligible for payouts.
Though Blanche will appoint the five commissioners tasked with processing claims, his precise role in the fund’s implementation is unclear. He told CNN it was developed through negotiations with Trump’s private lawyers, not him.
For some Democrats, that's a difference without a distinction.
“Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president's personal attorney," Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told Blanche during a combative exchange in a Senate hearing, "and that's the whole problem."
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche arrives for a closed-door meeting with Republican senators who are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump's ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
