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| Toss Securities CEO Kim Seung-yeon / Courtesy of Toss Securities |
Retail-focused Toss Securities prioritizes platform accessibility improvement
By Anna J. Park
It is rare to see a non-financial expert lead a local brokerage firm as CEO in Korea. But Kim Seung-yeon, the new CEO at Toss Securities since early April, is breaking the mold.
Kim, 42, has built an extensive career at global IT firms, including TikTok and Google, during the past 15 years. Accumulating expertise in marketing and business management, Kim served as a general manager at TikTok, a short-video communication platform, leading overall business strategies in Korea and Southeast Asia. TikTok posted the highest annual growth rate in the Southeast Asian region in 2022. Kim also previously worked at Google and Metaps+, a mobile marketing platform.
Convinced of Kim's capacities to successfully lead the global platform company's steep growth, the board of Toss Securities decided to appoint him as its new CEO for the next two years, confident that he can contribute to the company's stable growth and business expansion.
"I will strive to provide better services for customers by further advancing Toss Securities' businesses while laying out new insights and vision for the firm," Kim said.
Regarding market concerns that the new CEO might lack the necessary financial experience, Toss Securities highlighted that Kim's background, expertise and qualifications are enough to lead the retail-focused brokerage's growth.
"Toss Securities is a financial service company that is solely focusing on the retail business. As the firm is aimed at providing solutions as well as beneficial experiences for customers through our application platform, the new CEO's expertise in the global mobile platform business will be a great asset for the company," an official at Toss Securities told The Korea Times.
As the firm prioritizes increasing customer access to its mobile application, Kim's role in attracting new clients will be ever more important. In just six quarters since the firm's launch, Toss Securities achieved a turnaround, posting a net profit. The firm accounts for about 20 percent of U.S. stock trading services in the country.
Toss Securities plans to continue its aggressive market encroachment strategies by launching a web trading system (WTS), in addition to its incumbent mobile trading system (MTS) for trading local and overseas stocks and options.
Since the launch of Toss Securities in March 2021, the retail-focused mobile brokerage company has moved unconventionally when appointing its CEOs. Neither the firm's first CEO Park Jae-min, a veteran consultant, nor the next leader, Oh Chang-hoon, the current chief technology officer (CTO) at Toss Securities, were financial experts.
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