Chocolate Finance takes a S$500 million hit in ‘bank run’; looking to return to business as usual

[SINGAPORE] Around S$500 million in net withdrawals were made by Chocolate Finance’s customers – slashing the firm’s assets under management (AUM) by some 40 per cent – amid a “bank run” over the past two weeks.

But founder and chief executive Walter de Oude is adamant that it was in no way a “meltdown”.

In fact, he sees it as a success that the asset manager’s platform was able to handle the deluge of withdrawals in an automated and orderly manner.

“I’m really, really proud of the robustness and resilience of our business and systems as we’ve gone through a really, really crazy week,” he told The Business Times.

To be clear, Chocolate Finance is not a bank, but a fund manager with a capital markets services licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). But de Oude noted that even banks – which are required to maintain a healthy capital adequacy ratio to absorb potential losses – would not have been able to lose that much of its AUM without triggering Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation support.