Abacus ups ante with online space

Abacus Securities Corp., one of the country’s biggest stock brokerage houses, is debuting in the online stock trading business with the goal of edging closer to the top spot in just a matter of one to two years.

In a press briefing Thursday, Abacus vice president for research Raymond Neil Franco said the firm was eyeing a “strong number two” for new online trading platform mytrade.com.ph.

Within the next six months, Abacus also plans to distribute mutual funds using the same online platform, similar to the mutual fund supermarket service offered by the likes of COL Financial and First Metro Securities.

Around 60 percent of Abacus’ existing business consists of institutional sales. However, the launch of the online trading platform seeks to broaden its market base, especially among retail investors.

Instead of developing a proprietary trading platform or hooking into the system offered by the Philippine Stock Exchange, Abacus tapped a third-party technology provider, Kuala Lumpur-based N2N Connect which to date services leading stock brokerage houses and investment banks in Malaysia.

Franco said his group was “overwhelmed” and found a natural fit, given that the platform was “way ahead of what the competition offers.”

Abacus is also set to make available a mobile trading app in the next few days.

Minimum investment to open an account at mytrade.com.ph is P10,000.

To date, traditional portfolio accounts at Abacus average P50 million to as high as P1 billion. The brokerage house has around 20,000 traditional clients, of which 3,000 are active traders.