BDO Nomura Securities Inc., formerly PCIB Securities Inc., has started offering an online trading service for stocks listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange.
BDO Nomura Chairman and Investment Banking Group President Eduardo V. Francisco said the difference of the online trading platform from the BDO Securities Corp. it replaced is its focus as an online brokerage, where clients have online trading exclusivity.
Further, the platform will also enable Filipinos overseas to trade freely through a simple and paperless online application process and fund transfers through the customer’s BDO deposit accounts.
It also aims to target traders of a much younger age, Francisco particularly said of the “tech savvy” generation seen as the next developers of the capital markets.
Francisco expressed the hope that BDO Nomura will be their entry point in the trading game.
“It’s a question of educating them, understanding the risks and the rewards of stock trading,” the executive said.
The joint venture aims to tap into a wider market, as securities-trading accounts in the country number 700,000, of which some 250,000 are online accounts.
As of 2015, approximately 86 percent of new investors who opened trading accounts preferred to trade through an online broker.
BDO owns 51 percent of the joint-venture company, while Nomura holds 49 percent.
The online trading platform will provide investors in-depth market research, quick execution time and competitive rates.
President Koichi Katakawa explained that the “smooth and simple concept” of platform enables any client with an online BDO account to open a BDO Nomura account within five minutes, with no minimum capital requirement.
“We want to start the business at this point. We want to have a very broad client base. That’s why our first target in the business is the number of accounts, expand the number of accounts first. Then if that business jumps into the foreign equity accounts, I believe that we will be able to dominate the market,” he told financial reporters.
Without disclosing numbers, Katakawa said their target number of accounts by year-end is “quite ambitious”.
“If the bank accounts are 30 million, let’s use the number; let’s say your objective is to grab 10 percent, so that’s already 10 million,” Francisco said. He noted the growing demand for retail investors to engage in a less-sophisticated trading environment.
Meanwhile, Dante R. Tinga Jr., SVP and research head, disclosed that for 2017 the securities company is assuming a 12-percent year-on-year appreciation for their average share prices. “We think earnings growth next year will be at 10 percent to 11 percent,” he added.
The joint venture with BDO is Nomura’s second retail operation in the region, following one in Thailand in line with Nomura’s strategy to develop local retail brokerage businesses in Southeast Asia. Mia Rosienna Mallari