Why is loan ad compliance stricter than other verticals?
Most compliance checkers on this site flag a non-compliant ad — the underlying business is still legitimate, the copy just needs fixing. Loan advertising is different: if the lender isn't KPKT-licensed, or the specific ad was never granted its own advertisement permit by the Registrar, there's no compliant version of that ad to write. That's why licence status, permit status and licence-number display are treated as blocking checks here rather than just flagged issues — the same tier every other checker on this site uses for its highest-severity items.
What does this checklist check?
- Licence and permit status — blocking. Advertising an unlicensed moneylending business, or an ad without its own advertisement permit, has no legitimate fix short of getting licensed and permitted first.
- Licence-number display — blocking. Malaysian moneylender ads are expected to show the licence number and confirmation date.
- KPKT's prescribed ad format, banking implication, misleading approval claims, cost disclosure, urgency tactics — flagged, not blocking, but drawn from KPKT's own guideline document and Google's Ads policies.
- Google Ads Financial Services Verification — flagged. New since 14 April 2026; many existing campaigns may not yet be compliant with this platform-level requirement.
Methodology — where this checklist comes from
7 of the 10 rules are sourced directly from primary documents: the Moneylenders Act 1951 (fetched and read in full), KPKT's own official licensing guideline (fetched directly, read page-by-page since it's a scanned document with no machine-readable text), and Google's own Ads Policy Help pages. The remaining 3 — the exact text of Regulation 8 of the 2003 Regulations, the WL/WP licence-number-prefix convention, and general urgency-tactic guidance — are disclosed as not primary-verified rather than presented as confirmed fact. See the full open rule set for every rule's exact sourcing.
Last reviewed: August 2026