Investment firm opens first fund supermarket

CEBU, Philippines – COL Financial Philippines has expanded its offerings to the maturing investment market in the country, making mutual funds easily available to the growing online-savvy Filipinos.

"For some people [mutual] funds will be more palatable, than going directly to invest in stock market," said April Lynn Tan, COL's vice-president for head of Research.

It is for this reason that COL Financial recently introduced its added service, through an investment awareness roadshow held at the Radisson Blu Hotel Cebu.

The latest service called COL Fund Source, gives investors access to mutual funds easily via online.

This first fund supermarket brings together the big fund houses in the country such as Philam Asset Management, Sunlife, Philequity, ATR and First Metro.

Although the awareness of Filipinos from across age segment to invest is climbing to a surprising level, Tan said entry level investors are more attracted to mutual fund instruments, while others also put their money to play in the high yielding stock market investment "game."

With this offering, Tan said COL Financial is now moving to establish itself as the one-stop-shop online investment powerhouse, with initial 24 funds available in one platform.

'Mutual Fund' is an investment vehicle that is made up of a pool of funds collected from many investors for the purpose of investing in securities such as stocks, bonds, money market instruments, and similar assets.

"Now is the right time" to participate despite the major correction in the market. We believe that now would be a good time to start accumulating stocks," said Tan, defending on the pendulum-like movement of the Philippine stock market nowadays.

She said the country is far from entering the bear market as saying stock market analysts, like her remain confident that the country will stay in a bull market over the long-term, and that the slight downward movements, are just considered as correction that happens in a healthy market.

"Locally, there are no signs of overheating in terms if rising inflation, over inflated land values, as well as excessive borrowings," said Tan.

According to Tan, basing on the Philippines strong fundamental make-up, and its non-reliance "hot money", threat of another Asian financial crunch is far-fetched.

Tan explained that putting money into stocks and mutual funds is still the one of the wisest channels as the country's economy is strong enough to be affected by outside interventions.

Although right now, she said the Philippines is suffering from a major correction due to several factors including—concerns over the devaluation of the yuan and weakness of the Chinese economy; contagion from the sell-off in Asian stocks including our closest peers Thailand and Indonesia; and the lackluster gross domestic product and corporate profit growth locally.

The Philippines economic muscle is largely anchored on the country's strong fundamentals as shown by the resilient consumer spending growth buoyed by the country's attractive demographics, strong inflow of overseas remittances and the growing BPO sector; rising investment spending; and strong finances of the government.

"There is also a strong likelihood that we have already seen the low of this correction," said Tan.

Tan explained these expert views, in order to give light to the fragile and tender understanding of investors on the dynamics of capital market, so as confidence will be sustained.