KSecurities aims to be a premium operator
KASIKORN SECURITIES, one of the country’s top 10 brokerages by market share, has positioned itself as a premium operator in a bid to differentiate itself from discount brokers in the face of stiff competition.
In line with that, the company is offering a variety of new products and services.
“Over the past three years, we have launched a lot of new products, including offshore trading, short-term debentures, derivative warrants, options over the counter, and applications,” chief executive Thiti Tantikulanan told The Nation.
KSecurities has a market share of around 4 per cent. It is one of 34 brokers that has undergone the hard process of brokerage fee liberalisation.
Thiti said the company’s new products served customers who were mostly educated and wealthy.
He said launching marketing campaigns was now easier given the social media revolution.
“Overall securities trading via the Internet now accounts for up to 60 per cent of the total market, compared to only 30 per cent in the past. For KS, broker securities transactions via the Internet is about 65 per cent of our total transactions,” Thiti said.
The KS Offshore Investment, a new service in which customers are provided with stock to trade in 41 major markets in 31 countries, was launched this year.
Thiti said thanks to parent company Kasikornbank, KSecurities was able to offer a low brokerage fee to offshore trading customers. The brokerage fee is about 0.2 per cent of the trading value, which is close to the domestic brokerage fee, while the foreign exchange rate is charged at the interbank rate.
KSecurities assistant managing director Sutthisit Jamdee, who is also head of the financial product-development department, said the broker targeted more than 100 new accounts.
Sutthisit said this was attributable to putting things into place at the right time as financial technology was developed. “We are one of a few brokers left that provide the offshore trading service,” he said. “As we focus on execution, this pushes the portfolio size to grow rapidly.”
He added that the company might launch new products related to offshore trading in the second half of the year.
The KS Offshore Investment is one of KSecurities’ new product services – one of its three core |businesses. The other two other are brokerage fee and investment banking.
Assistant managing director Kavee Chukitkasem said the KS Super Stock application helped customers receive information, analytics, and alerts so they could make trading decisions or manage their portfolios more conveniently.
Customers can also post buy or sell stock orders via the application as well as use functions that allowed them to set, for example, alerts on prices and dividends.
Managing director Padermpob Songkroh said the company has designed new products in accordance with customer demands.
For investment banking, he said, the company had two initial public offerings and one merger and acquisition deal this year.
