Bourse aims to win new retail investors with smartphone apps

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippine Stock Exchange has stepped up efforts to grow the country’s retail stock investor base with the launch of a mobile app for real-time flow of corporate disclosures. This will soon be followed by the introduction of another app for mobile trading.

In a press briefing on Monday, PSE president Hans Sicat said the introduction of the mobile app for disclosures, called the PSE Edge system, would be a “pretty big changer” that would allow individual investors to get information materially affecting stocks in their portfolio.

“This brings us to the level that we’re competitive. Access is very easy and affordable. It is the first in Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) that’s exchange sponsored,” Sicat said.

PSE Edge for mobile, developed with the help of the KRX Korean stock exchange, allows smartphone users—for both Apple iOS and Android devices—to receive disclosure notifications from listed companies they monitor. It has an easy-to-use interface that provides quick links to nine main segments: company information, company announcements, financial reports, PSEi company disclosures, dividends and rights, trading halts and suspensions, exchange notices, exchange-traded funds and other reports.

Meanwhile, the launch of a mobile app for trading using the Tradex online trading platform by the second quarter of this year is seen adding to the PSE’s suite of services.

In the future, the PSE may unlock revenues from these mobile apps by offering premium services for which it can charge fees.

These may include proprietary market data and analytics from which other exchanges in the region draw at least 10 percent of revenues.

At present, the PSE generates only 6 percent of total revenues from market data, Sicat said.

Stock exchanges from developed markets generate revenues equivalent to as much as 20 percent of their total from the sale of market data, especially as these exchanges offer an array of sophisticated products like derivatives, Sicat.

Derivatives are financial products whose values are based on the values of underlying products or indices.

With PSE Edge, users can customize and filter information by listing only the stocks they follow.

Moving forward, the PSE sees online stock trading as a key vehicle to reach out to more retail investors. There are currently 10 stock brokerage houses that have set up their own online trading systems, while three are using the PSE’s Tradex. There are about 10 more likely to embrace the Tradex system.