GCash trading platform drives 11% growth in PSE accounts

MANILA, Philippines — More retail traders created accounts to invest in the local bourse last year as GCash has made stock trading more accessible to Filipinos who have gotten used to transacting via e-wallet platforms.

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), in a statement on Wednesday, noted that stock market accounts had risen by 11 percent to 1.9 million last year. This means that around 1.75 percent of the population now invest in equities.

The growth was mainly driven by the opening of online accounts, which rose by 21 percent to 1.5 million or 80 percent of the total.

PSE attributed this to GStocksPH, the stock trading platform of the e-wallet brand GCash. It was fully rolled out last year.

“Giving e-wallet holders direct access to the stock market is instrumental in our drive to increase retail investor participation in the market,” PSE president and CEO Ramon Monzon said.

Online trading

The local bourse noted that the average value per online trade had risen by 1.8 percent to P47,050.48 last year from P46,236.40 in 2022.

READ: 2023 stock market accounts up 11.3% to 1.9 million

Most or 98.5 percent of the total accounts last year were retail investors while the rest consisted of institutional investors. Over 70 percent of the retail investors had an annual income of less than P500,000.

Nearly half or 45.6 percent of the retail investors were in the 30 to 44 age group, followed by 45- to 59-year-olds with a 20.2-percent share and 18- to 29-year-olds with 19.5 percent. The remaining 14.8 percent was accounted for by investors who were at least 60 years old.

The concentration of investors in Metro Manila decreased to 68.2 percent last year from 81.5 percent, showing that more traders in the provinces were interested in making stock investments.

Democratizing access to the stock market

“The programs that democratize access to the stock market played a role in the investor location data in 2023. Aside from e-wallets serving as access points to stock investing, the Exchange’s programs such as PSE EASy paved the way for investors based outside Metro Manila to invest in the stock market,” Monzon said.

PSE EASy (Electronic Allocation System) is a digital platform launched in 2019 aimed at encouraging more participation from local small investors, especially those outside Metro Manila.

“I hope this growth in non-Metro Manila investors will be sustained over the years so that the geographical aspect of financial inclusion is addressed,” he added.

This year, the local bourse projects the PSE Index to trade within 6,800 to 8,300 territory on the back of the country’s better economic performance.