Bridging Loan Against Shares in Singapore: When It Beats a Margin Facility

You hold a substantial portfolio of SGX-listed shares, built up over years. Selling is not straightforward. A sale would crystallise a gain at the wrong time, or the tax position inside a holding company is too complex to unwind quickly. Your private bank's margin facility has reached its limit and has nothing left to offer.

A bridging loan against shares is a different structure from anything a bank offers on a revolving basis. Understanding what it is, and where it diverges from a margin line, is the starting point for deciding whether it solves your problem.

The answer hinges on one structural difference: a fixed maturity with the rules agreed up front, versus a revolving line repriced daily.

What is a bridging loan in Singapore?

A bridging loan in Singapore is a short-term, asset-backed facility designed to fund a specific purpose over a defined period, with a clear exit agreed before drawdown. The name comes from property: bridging the gap between a purchase and a sale. But the structure applies equally well to liquid securities.

When secured against shares, the mechanics are straightforward. The lender takes a first charge over your shareholding as security. You draw liquidity against that position; custody arrangements, haircuts and the treatment of dividends are considered case by case, subject to terms. At maturity (typically 3 to 24 months), you repay principal plus rolled-up interest from a sale, a corporate event, or another source of funds.

What separates a bridging loan from a margin facility is the term. A private bridging loan in Singapore is agreed at inception: you agree the amount, the LTV, and the maturity date. Share-backed loans carry top-up or margin-call triggers if the share price falls, and those triggers are set out in the term sheet before you draw, so you know the rules at the outset rather than discovering them in a volatile week.

Bridging loan vs margin facility: the structural difference

Your private bank's margin facility is a revolving credit line. The advance rate on each position is repriced daily against the market. A volatility spike can push your loan-to-value above the permitted ceiling overnight and force a liquidation at the worst possible moment. This is not a design flaw; it is how the product is built, and it is priced accordingly.

TDSR, as MAS explains, applies to banks lending against property and is not the binding constraint for a private lender. Rikvin Capital is an excluded moneylender lending to accredited investors and corporates, underwriting on the value of the position and the credibility of the exit rather than declared income. For shareholders whose income is retained inside a holding company or arrives irregularly from dividends and director's fees, that matters.

If your timeline is short, speak to our team early: establishing whether the charge documentation is feasible is often the fastest part of the process.

When a share-backed bridge is the right call

A bridge against shares works when the position is liquid and the exit is defined. The clearest case: a shareholder in an SGX-listed company who needs $10M for 12 months ahead of a planned partial sale at market, and whose private bank's margin line is already at capacity. The bridge funds the liquidity need; the exit is that planned sale.

It also fits a family office holding a blue-chip portfolio for succession reasons, where a partial sale would trigger internal approvals or crystallise a gain at a bad time. A fixed-term bridge avoids those triggers while funding a near-term deployment.

It is the wrong tool when the position is illiquid or concentrated. Rikvin does not lend against thinly traded, concentrated, locked-up or moratorium shares, pre-IPO stock, or private company equity with no secondary market. The exit depends on a liquidity event that may not materialise within the term.

If you cannot describe a credible repayment route within 24 months, the structure does not hold.

The cost is higher than a bank's margin line. Interest can be rolled up rather than serviced monthly, and the all-in rate reflects the speed and certainty of the structure rather than a bank's cost of funds. If your margin facility has headroom and carries no call risk, it is almost certainly the cheaper option. Our lending process runs from initial discussion to indicative term sheet in 24 hours, with drawdown typically in about two weeks.

For a fuller picture of private share-backed lending, see our overview of short-term loans against Singapore shares. Our case study on a $25M acquisition funded over a single weekend illustrates how quickly a time-pressured drawdown can close when the asset is clean and the exit is credible.