Samsung Securities to Offer Customer-Tailored Services
By Kim Jae-won
Staff Reporter
Following the global financial crisis, individual investors are getting more sophisticated about financial products and services offered by brokerage houses due to a growing understanding of risks associated with equity investments.
For this reason, securities companies are having a hard time in securing wealthy customers. Since most firms offer similar products and services, investors tend not to move unless they provide differentiated services.
Against this backdrop, Samsung Securities is placing a top priority in setting itself apart from its peers both in products and services. To that end, it has developed the customer-tailored financial services scheme dubbed "POP," or platform of private banking service.
POP is a key project designed to help Samsung achieve its ambitious vision to become one of the top 10 global companies in 10 years. Samsung seeks to strengthen its capability to assess fund performance through the POP system for better asset management services.
Samsung extended private banking services to all of its customers with no regards to income level. It manages customers' assets based on its portfolio investment guideline.
Samsung is running various businesses from retail and institutional services to capital market and investment banking at home as well as overseas.
For retail businesses, it aims to expand its client base. To achieve this goal, it plans to strengthen its market position in the Gangnam area, which covers the Gangnam, Seocho, and Songpa districts of Seoul.
So far, Samsung has 27 branches in this area, home to many rich residents, and will add four more branches there in 2010. It will also deploy 120 more private bankers to the current 330 PBs in the region to enforce its asset management business.
Samsung is eager to preoccupy the fund transfer market. The government allowed customers to transfer their funds from January, and the size of the new market is huge. The number of transferred funds is 2,226, and the total amount of assets reached 116.2 trillion won, the firm said.
It provides several services to attract such a big demand. It offers a fund-collateral loan service with no interest, and gives interest incentives to CMA, or cash management account customers. Samsung also provides analysis reports for clients, and lets them know about maturity and profitability information by sending text messages.
Stabilizing Hong Kong Business
Samsung aims to stabilize the Hong Kong business this year. Hong Kong is a strategic base for Samsung, which wants to become a leading Asian regional player in five years.
The firm hired 50 new global talents, including nine brokers and 22 equity analysts, last year to set up the branch. It had a successful initial public offering (IPO) for Schramm Hong Kong, a subsidiary of Germany-based coating company Schramm Holding in November 2009.
Samsung will expand the scope of its equity research to 87 corporations in the city by the first half of 2010. It also plans to target Korean companies, which want to be listed on the Hong Kong bourse, as well as Chinese firms, which are waiting for listing on the Seoul bourse.