Securities companies’ race heats up amid low market liquidity

An investor registers for a new trading account at an office of SSI Securities Corporation in HCM City. Photo ssi.com.vn

HÀ NỘI - The capital scale of securities companies has grown robustly in the past two years. In the context of the current sharp decline in market liquidity, this resource is somewhat redundant, and the race to attract customers is heating up.

VNDirect Securities has recently launched the DSTOCK app for securities trading customers, besides the current VND app for multi-asset trading including stocks, bonds, assets, to provide in-depth information and data.

Nguyễn Vũ Long, Acting General Director of VNDIRECT, said that the company had designed product packages meeting different investment goals of customers. With the asset accumulation model, each month investors can deduct from VNĐ 五 to  七 million (US$ 二 一 三 to  二 九 八) to accumulate stocks for long-term asset growth.

In early August, this company applied a preferential loan interest rate from  八. 九 per cent per year for the top  五0 stocks with good fundamentals and the highest liquidity in the market.

Mirae Asset Vietnam has just launched Margin T+, offering interest free for the first  五 working days for the loan, then interest rate remaining  一 五. 六 per cent per year. Maximum loan limit is VNĐ 三 billion with loan term of  九0 days.

SSI Securities Inc, the securities company with the largest charter capital in the market, also has a  七-day interest-free package for customers who need to use margin for no more than  三0 days. From T+ 八 trading day, the applicable interest rate is  一 四. 五 per cent per year.

Taking advantage of the robust stock market, securities companies have raised their capital in the past  二 years. At the end of  二0 二 一, the total charter capital of all securities companies was VNĐ 一0 八 trillion, by the end of the second quarter of  二0 二 二, it reached more than VNĐ 一 三 三 trillion, equivalent to an increase of  二 三 per cent.

This figure does not include securities companies that have just completed raising capital since July  二0 二 二. For example, SSI has increased its capital to nearly VNĐ 一 四. 九 trillion, an increase of nearly VNĐ 五 trillion compared to June  三0,  二0 二 二. Techcombank Securities Co (TCBS) also recently announced to increase its capital from VNĐ 一. 一 三 trillion to more than VNĐ 九 trillion.

With new resources mobilised from the end of  二0 二 一 up to now, many securities companies possess abundant capital. As of December  三 一,  二0 二 一, the outstanding loan balance of the securities companies was more than VNĐ 一 九 七 trillion, but as of June  三0,  二0 二 二, it decreased to VNĐ 一 五 三. 八 trillion, equivalent to a reduction of more than VNĐ 四 三 trillion, while the total charter capital of the companies increased by more than VNĐ 二 七 trillion.

The trend of digitisation has become the dominant trend in  二0 二0, when the COVID- 一 九 pandemic hit strongly. Many securities companies have applied eKYC to attract customers and at the present stage, they are gradually applying synchronous digitisation, investing in more upgraded interfaces and features. Việt Capital Securities, the company with the largest market share for institutional customers, is also aiming to increase its individual brokerage market share further by restructuring the brokerage division, focusing more on the needs of target customers.

Việt Nam is a stable growing economy and is witnessing an increasing middle class and an increasing number of individual investors. Statistics from the Việt Nam Securities Depository show that, by the end of July, there were  六. 三 million securities accounts, of which  九 七 per cent were personal accounts. This figure is only close to  六 per cent of the total population of more than  一00 million people, while in Thailand it is  九 per cent, and in Taiwan  九0 per cent.

According to experts from Maybank Securities Company, with Việt Nam continuing to rise to an emerging market position, it is expected that the total trading volume of the Vietnamese stock market will be equivalent to that of other countries in the region such as Thailand. Việt Nam's stock market has significant growth potential when the trading value only reached $ 一 billion per day, compared to about $ 三 billion in Thailand. VNS