COL Financial expands, diversifies fund offerings

Leading online stock brokerage COL Financial has set up its own asset management firm to diversify its portfolio as a one-stop shop online platform for capital market products.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Monday, COL said it had obtained approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to register three new units. These are COL Equity Index Unitized Mutual Fund Inc., COL Cash Management Unitized Mutual Fund Inc. and COL Investment Management Inc.

This meant that aside from offering stock brokerage and fund distribution services, COL would also start creating its own funds.

“COL established an asset management group to expand our product offerings and help develop the capital markets,” COL fund expert Marvin Fausto said in a text message.

COL ventured into the fund distribution business four years ago, but offered only the funds created by other financial institutions.

Based on the names of the new units, COL plans to create unitized funds, which are different from the equity-laced mutual funds that it now distributes through its platform.

A unitized fund is defined as a type of fund structure that uses pooled funds to invest with individually reported unit values for investors. Assets are pooled and managed for a specific objective, usually with heavy concentration in one stock. Investors are provided with a daily unitized value for their portion of the investment.

The value of COL’s assets under administration increased by 25 percent to P3.1 billion as of end-June 2019 compared to the same period last year.

The diversification of COL’s product offering also sets up other opportunities for cross-selling to its growing client base in the equities market.

As of end-June 2019, COL’s client base grew by 14.5 percent year-on-year to over 313,000, while client equity expanded by around 12 percent to a record P78.7 billion. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA