If you cancel an unsecured loan from a licensed moneylender within the new three-business-day cooling-off period, part of the approval fee you paid comes back to you. How much depends on one number: the size of your loan.
The rule took effect on 15 September 2026 and replaces the previous position, where a lender could keep the entire approval fee plus any interest that had built up. This page works through what you actually pay, and what you actually get back, at a range of loan sizes.
The one calculation that matters
Strip away the wording and the rule comes down to a single line:
Cancelling costs you the smaller of two numbers: the approval fee you were charged, or the cap set by the Ministry of Law.
Everything else follows from that. The caps are:
| Principal amount | Cap on what the lender may keep |
|---|---|
| S$5,000 or less | S$50 |
| More than S$5,000 | 3.5% of the principal |
Whichever of those two figures is smaller — the cap or the fee you were actually charged — is what you forfeit. The rest of the approval fee is returned to you, in the sense that you are not required to repay it.
Interest does not enter the calculation at all. MinLaw also set an absolute ceiling: whatever the arithmetic produces, you can never repay more than the principal amount you originally borrowed.
What you get back at different loan sizes
The figures below assume an approval fee of 10%, which is the maximum a licensed moneylender may charge. If your lender charged less, see the next section.
| Principal | Fee charged | Cap | You forfeit | Returned to you | You repay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S$2,000 | S$200 | S$50 | S$50 | S$150 | S$1,850 |
| S$5,000 | S$500 | S$50 | S$50 | S$450 | S$4,550 |
| S$5,001 | S$500.10 | S$175.04 | S$175.04 | S$325.06 | S$4,675.94 |
| S$10,000 | S$1,000 | S$350 | S$350 | S$650 | S$9,350 |
| S$20,000 | S$2,000 | S$700 | S$700 | S$1,300 | S$18,700 |
On a S$10,000 loan, cancelling costs you S$350. You received S$9,000, you repay S$9,350, and S$650 of the S$1,000 fee never leaves your pocket.
The S$5,000 cliff edge
Look closely at the third and fourth rows of that table. They are one dollar apart in principal, but S$125 apart in what cancelling costs you.
A S$5,000 loan sits in the flat S$50 band. A S$5,001 loan crosses into the 3.5% band, where the cap jumps to S$175.04. Borrowing one extra dollar increases the cost of changing your mind by more than a hundred and twenty.
This matters if you are already borrowing an amount near the threshold. If you are weighing S$4,800 against S$5,200, the cooling-off cost is one more factor in favour of the smaller sum. It is not a reason to borrow less than you need, but it is worth knowing the line is there.
Note also that the band is set by the principal, not by the amount that reaches your bank account. A S$5,000 loan disburses around S$4,500 after a 10% fee, but it is still a S$5,000 loan for this purpose.
When your number will be lower
The cap is a ceiling, not a fixed charge. A lender can only keep what they actually charged you, so if your approval fee came in below the cap, the fee is what you forfeit.
In practice this splits along a simple line:
- Loans above S$5,000: the cap bites unless your lender’s approval fee is under 3.5% of the principal. Most approval fees in the market sit well above that, so expect to forfeit the full 3.5%.
- Loans of S$5,000 or less: the cap is a flat S$50, so the fee only comes in lower on small loans. At a 10% fee, that means loans under S$500.
There is an edge case worth understanding. If your approval fee is at or below the cap, you forfeit the whole fee — which means you repay the full principal and get nothing back. On a S$400 loan with a S$40 fee, you receive S$360 and repay S$400. Cancelling costs you the S$40 you had already paid, and no more.
What you are not charged
Three things are worth being explicit about, because the old rules worked differently:
- No interest. Not on the days the money was in your account, not as an early-settlement charge. Nothing.
- No cancellation fee. The retained portion of the approval fee is the only amount your lender may keep. They cannot add an administrative charge on top of it.
- Nothing above the principal. If the numbers ever produced a figure higher than what you borrowed, the ceiling rule caps it at the principal.
Which loans this applies to
The cooling-off period covers unsecured loans from licensed moneylenders, which is the category most personal and short-term cash loans fall into. Business loans are excluded — if you borrowed for a company or business purpose, none of the above applies to your loan.
Cancelling with Oasis Credit
Cancellation is confirmed in person. You will need to come to our Clementi office to complete it, bringing the same documents you provided when you applied — your NRIC or FIN and the supporting documents from your original application.
Call ahead on +65 6777 1121 before you travel. That puts your cancellation request on record from the moment you make it, and lets us work out your settlement figure before you arrive, so you are not waiting at the counter while it is calculated. Once the cancellation is confirmed and repayment made, we process the settlement within 24 hours. That 24 hours is our processing time on our side — it is not your deadline. Your deadline is the end of the three business days.
Coming in is our process for confirming a cancellation, not something MinLaw requires. If getting to Clementi inside your window is genuinely difficult, call and say so — what matters is that we hear from you before your deadline.
Oasis Credit Services Pte Ltd · Licence No. 58/2026 Blk 442, Clementi Avenue 3, #01-87, Singapore 120442 Phone: +65 6777 1121 Monday to Saturday, 11.30am – 7.00pm. Closed Sundays and public holidays.
Our loan approval fee is 10% of the principal, charged once when the loan is granted and deducted from the amount disbursed to you. That is the maximum an approval fee can be under the Moneylenders Act, which means the tables above apply to our loans exactly as written — find your loan size and read across.
Before you count on it
Three business days is a genuinely short window, and the cooling-off period is a correction mechanism rather than a reason to borrow. You still forfeit real money if you cancel, and on a larger loan that figure runs into the hundreds.
Check that any lender you deal with appears on MinLaw’s list of licensed moneylenders before handing over personal details. Licensed moneylenders are regulated under the Moneylenders Act and are not banks; fees, interest and loan limits work differently.
Sources: Ministry of Law press release, 31 August 2026 · Registry of Moneylenders