COL Financial expands options for clients

MANILA, Philippines - Online brokerage firm COL Financial Group Inc. is expanding further the investment options for its clients.

In a disclosure, COL Financial said it signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with ATR KimEng Asset Management Inc.

Under the MOA, COL Financial said it has been appointed as a non-exclusive distributor of registered common shares of several investment companies.

Specifically, it can now distribute shares of ATRKE Equity Opportunity Fund Inc., ATRKE Philippine Balanced Fund Inc. and ATR KimEng Alpha Opportunity Fund Inc.

Early this year, COL Financial partnered with two of the largest asset managers in the country, allowing the leading online stockbroker to broaden its lineup of financial products.

It entered into agreements with the asset management arm of Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands and Sun Life Asset Management Co. Inc.

With these deals, COL Financial expanded its offering to money market funds, bond funds, fixed income funds, actively-managed funds, balanced funds and index funds.

The partnerships will make COL Financial a one-stop shop for investments while boosting its fee-based income, company president and CEO Conrado Bate earlier said.

COL Financial will sign more partnership agreement with asset management companies that are looking for a new platform to distribute their products.

Given continuing market education efforts and improvement of product offerings, COL Financial expects to grow its customer base by another 40-50 percent this year from 82,000 as of end-2013.

Earnings of COL Financial was virtually unchanged at P303.6 million last year due to the normalization of the firm’s effective tax rate. Consolidated revenues rose 14 percent to P741 million, driven by local operations that saw a 17.2-percent jump in operating profit to a record P368.9 million.

COL Financial said it benefited from the growing popularity of investments in the Philippine stock market brought about by falling interest rates and growing customer base.