HOCK LOCK SIEW
A ‘shadow bank’ hiding in Singapore’s Little India casts light on financial services gap
The challenge then is to work out how to cut needless friction in the system without weakening safeguards
Add BT as a preferred source
[SINGAPORE] In a rented room above Norris Road in Singapore’s Little India district, a man named Raju Krishnamoorthi quietly processed more than S$28 million in just three months, from February to April 2025.
But Raju was neither a high-flying banker nor a financial technology entrepreneur with a slick digital app. What he had was a simple business model: migrant workers wanted to send cash back to the sub-continent, and Raju would help them do this.
Working for a man known as Syed, Raju earned a modest S$1,500 a month to act as the human face of a money remittance syndicate.
