Who qualifies for a Malaysian stock loan?

You will generally qualify if you hold at least RM 5 million of Bursa Malaysia Main Market or ACE Market shares that are freely tradable, not charged to another lender and not suspended or classified as financially distressed, and you can pass the lender's KYC and source-of-funds checks. Moratorium shares are assessed separately.

How large must the position be?

Transactions are arranged for positions valued from RM 5 million upward, with no defined upper bound. Very large positions can be accommodated through staged structuring.

Size is read alongside liquidity. A holding worth many days of the counter's trading value is sized more conservatively than one the market could absorb quickly, because the lender may one day need to sell it. The same ringgit value can therefore support different advances on different counters.

Which Bursa shares qualify?

Shares on the Main Market and selected shares on the ACE Market can qualify, assessed counter by counter rather than by category. What matters is how the shares would behave as collateral: free float, average daily trading value, market capitalisation, sector, shareholder concentration and volatility.

Sector rules can also matter. In regulated industries such as banking and telecommunications, foreign-ownership limits narrow who could buy the shares in an enforcement, which tends to make the indicative loan-to-value more conservative, as our note on how foreign-ownership limits shape LTV explains. ACE Market counters raise their own questions about liquidity and sponsor oversight, covered in borrowing against ACE Market shares.

What disqualifies a holding (moratorium, existing charge, PN17 or GN3 status, suspension)?

Four things usually stop a holding from being accepted as it stands: a post-IPO moratorium, an existing charge in favour of another lender, a PN17 or GN3 classification, and a trading suspension. An existing charge can be cured at drawdown; a suspension or distress classification is usually treated as a hard screen.

Moratorium shares

Shares under a post-IPO moratorium cannot be sold, transferred or assigned until the lock-up is released, which limits what a lender could do with them. Lenders therefore usually wait for the release date or structure the facility around it.

The rules differ by board. Main Market moratoriums are set by the Securities Commission's Equity Guidelines, and ACE Market moratoriums by Rule 3.19 of Bursa Malaysia's ACE Market Listing Requirements. Both restrict selling, transferring and assigning the shares, and the release dates for a particular listing are set out in its prospectus.

An existing charge

A lender needs clean security, so shares already charged to another lender cannot back a new facility until that charge is released. The usual route is to repay the existing lender from the new facility at drawdown, so that one charge is discharged as the other is created.

Under section 40 of the Securities Industry (Central Depositories) Act 1991, charged shares are transferred into the chargee's securities account, designated the Pledged Securities Account, and transferred back to the owner's account once the charge is discharged.

PN17 or GN3 status

A counter classified under Practice Note 17 on the Main Market or Guidance Note 3 on the ACE Market is a hard eligibility screen. The classification is public and dated, and it thins trading and narrows the pool of buyers in an enforcement.

If the issuer fails to regularise its position within the time allowed, the classification can end in suspension and de-listing, which is why a lender reads it as a question of whether to lend at all rather than of how much.

A trading suspension

Shares of a suspended counter cannot be traded on Bursa Malaysia while the suspension lasts, so they can neither be valued on the screen nor sold to repay a loan. Lenders generally do not lend against a suspended counter, and terms on what a later suspension means vary by facility.

What documents will I need?

To get indicative terms you need only three things: the counter or company, the approximate size of the position, and your objective. Full KYC and source-of-funds documents follow at the documentation stage, alongside the facility, charge and custody agreements your own counsel reviews.

The exact list varies by lender and by borrower, but a lender will typically ask for:

• Identity. Identity documents and proof of address for an individual; for a company, its constitution, the board resolutions approving the borrowing and the charge, and details of its directors and ultimate owners.
• The shares. A recent statement of the CDS account that holds them, and confirmation of any existing charge or moratorium.
• Source of funds. Evidence of how the shares, and the wealth behind them, were acquired.
• The transaction documents. The facility agreement, the share charge and the custody arrangement, reviewed by Malaysian counsel of your choosing.

The table sets out each requirement, what is checked, and where it is explained in more detail.

What else do borrowers ask about eligibility?

This page is general information about how eligibility is usually assessed. It is not an offer of credit or legal advice, and every facility's terms are set by the lender after review of the actual holding. Moratorium rules were amended in 2026, so the current text and the relevant prospectus should be checked with your Malaysian counsel.