1 NOV 2026 — Individuals in Singapore who register a newly bought car as a private hire car (PHC) can no longer borrow on looser terms than other car buyers. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on 29 October that, from 30 October, individual PHC buyers face the same loan caps as other private car buyers. Loans are now held to 60% or 70% of the price, and repayment to seven years. MAS says some buyers had been registering cars as PHCs mainly to get easier credit.
What changes from 30 October
The MAS release sets out three limits. Where a car's Open Market Value (OMV) is $20,000 or less, a loan may cover at most "70% of the purchase price, including relevant taxes and the price of the Certificate of Entitlement (COE), where applicable". Above that OMV the loan-to-value (LTV) ceiling is 60%. Tenure is capped at seven years.
The caps cover loans from financial institutions and from licensed or exempt moneylenders, and they apply equally to hire purchase and conditional sale agreements. Individuals acting as sole proprietors are included. The rule is not backdated. It bites where the sales agreement is signed on or after 30 October 2026 or, where there is no sales agreement, where the COE is obtained on or after that date.
The legal change sits in MAS Notice 642 (Amendment) 2026, the rulebook for bank car loans, issued on 29 October and in force the next day. Under its wording, the cap applies only when the loan agreement and the purchase (or the COE) both date from 30 October or later, so loans already running on existing PHCs are not touched.
Why MAS closed the exemption
Individual-owned PHCs had been exempt "on the basis that they were for commercial use", MAS said. Its case for ending that is short. It wrote that there have been "more instances of individual buyers of private cars using this exemption who have no intent to offer PHC services". Its next sentence reads: "A recent surge in individual-owned self-drive PHC registrations (~500 per month) suggests that some may be doing so primarily to access more permissive financing terms."
MAS does not say how many of those registrations it believes were made for credit rather than driving, and the release names no buyer, dealer or lender. Its wording is that "some may be" doing so. It also says the change will make new PHC drivers "exercise the same financial prudence as other private car buyers".
At the rate MAS gives, 500 registrations a month works out to about 6,000 a year (500 × 12). That is our arithmetic on MAS's monthly run-rate, not a yearly total MAS has published, and the release does not say how long the surge has lasted.
What the caps mean in cash
The difference shows up in the deposit. The car prices below are our own illustrations, not MAS figures. LTV is measured against the full purchase price, COE and taxes included.
Take a car costing $150,000 with an OMV above $20,000. At 60%, the largest loan allowed is $90,000, so the buyer must find at least $60,000. At $100,000 on the same terms, the floor is $40,000. A $100,000 car with an OMV of $20,000 or less can carry a $70,000 loan, which leaves $30,000 to pay upfront.
That money has to be the buyer's own. The amended notice bars a bank from lending unless the buyer has already paid the gap between price and maximum loan "out of monies not obtained through any credit facility". Before 30 October, MAS's caps did not apply to an individual PHC buyer at all, though a lender could still set its own terms. The seven-year limit on tenure also puts a floor under the monthly instalment, which readers can test on our car loan calculator.
A 2013 carve-out, rewritten
The exemption is as old as the caps. When MAS brought back car-loan limits in February 2013, its release listed private hire cars among the "commercial vehicles" left outside the rules, next to taxis and goods vehicles. The limits were then 60% and 50%, with a five-year tenure. MAS eased them in May 2016 to today's 70%, 60% and seven years.
The 2026 amendment deletes "private hire car" from that definition of a commercial vehicle. In its place the notice adds a narrower exclusion, for a PHC that is not owned by an individual.
Who is still exempt
Business-owned PHCs, motorcycles and commercial vehicles stay outside the caps. MAS's footnote defines commercial vehicles as goods vehicles (not goods-cum-passengers vehicles), buses of several kinds, engineering plants and taxis. Its explainer on car-loan rules, dated 29 October, now lists "Private hire car that is not owned by an individual" among the exemptions.
Drivers who rent from fleet operators are left where they were before. MAS said the Government had weighed giving private-hire and car-leasing firms their own COE category, and decided against it, because this "will likely result in higher rentals for PHC drivers and higher fares for PHC users". It added that such a category would need more prescriptive rules on drivers and cars.
The gap MAS says it will watch
The caps reach banks, finance companies and moneylenders. MAS names one route the caps do not yet cover. "The Government will monitor market developments and take further steps to apply the same restrictions consistently across financing arrangements, such as in-house loans," the release says. It gives no date for those steps.
MAS also said the Government will "work closely with platform operators" to apply the measures, without naming any. Its parting line was aimed at buyers, who were told to "borrow within their means and avoid unregulated financing schemes".
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