iFAST

Felt iFast is doing high stake gambit in China. Quite a number SG companies tried and failed. Hope iFast management knows what they are doing

The good days for fund distributors is over.

There is plenty of competition for fund management services at never before seen low cost to consumers. There are the traditional distributors, and then the Super Apps (and other still growing wanna-bes), and then the start-ups offering 'auto asset allocation.'

To the consumer, what is particularly attractive of FSM over these competitors?

As for its securities brokerage business, why not go for the many pure-brokerage players already available in the SG/HK market?

If iFAST's profitability is a function of stock market prices/sentiment, why not consider buying a market index instead, where there is no exposure to the competitive industry of iFAST's business?

And finally, are prospects reasonably good for iFAST to be trading at 30x FY18 earnings?

>As for its securities brokerage business, why not go for the many pure-brokerage players already available in the SG/HK market?

iFast is not bad for purchasing HK shares. Compared to other brokers:
- They don't charge dividend handling fees
- No recurring custodian fees
- Lower trading cost
- For conversion between HKD and SGD, price is about 0.5% more than that quoted by XE, compared to about 1%+ more for lets say DBS vickers (Biggest difference IMO)

I plan to gradually sell my HK stocks held by DBS vickers, and buy using iFast.

Just commenting as a user of iFast. (No idea about the business prospects)

Thanks for sharing.

I have yet to make any offshore purchases, so I am not familiar with such details. But at some later time, when there is something that catches my eye, I expect to do so.

I do acknowledge that the savings from using less established brokers to transact can be attractive. But with regards to offshore purchases, counter party risk is still my main concern. And to mitigate this risk, I will be willing to pay slightly higher transaction costs, to say, DBS, or whoever is 1) financially strong, and 2) uses similarly strong counter parties to perform transactions. If DBS does not have a local office in Hong Kong, and instead uses some small broker in Hong Kong to perform transactions sent from Singapore, then perhaps I may as well use iFAST.

It seems like the world is shifting to a model with zero fees for trading, can IFast survive in such an environment, i seriously doubt so. It feels to me that Ifast doesnt have enough scale to compete with the larger players, yet ifast is trading at a premium that seems to show good growth. I would get out at today's high price, not a stock to be held for short term or long term in my opinion

The bulk of iFast's earnings are not from retail investors. The impact is unlikely to be big unless the wholesale segment also moves into zero fees.

Sent from my CPH1917 using Tapatalk

Here are the contenders to Singapore Digital banking race
(click to read)

Wealth management firm and mainboard listed iFast Corporation confirmed that they have also applied a digital banking license with two Chinese partners namely — Yillion Group and Hande Group.
Yillion Group operates a digital bank in China and Hande Group is a fintech firm founded by the former Chairman of WeBank — a digital bank backed by the Tencent Group.
The newly formed consortium is reportedly eyeing the underserved SME sector in Singapore.

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Separately, iFAST also announced that it's AUM had reached a milestone of S$10B
(click for SGX announcement)



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感恩 
Thanks all valuebuddies for helping me in my investment journey.
I learn a lot from you.

Being a client of iFast, I have experienced various problems with regards to its trading platform. For eg, now and then the site will have extremely slow response time when keying in an order. When the problem arises, it can take as long as 8 to 10 seconds for an order to go through. This results in a client missing trades due to slow execution. The site also requires more steps than necessary to confirm an order compared to sites at the broking house I use. The need to key in password for each order, additional steps to acknowledge that you have shares in the CDP in order to sell shares not kept with iFast, need to select which account (cash or "park and earn", even though you don't subscribe for such an account) to pay your purchase with, etc, all add to the wasted seconds needed to execute a trade. So, unless you want to don't mind speed and the additional steps, you will find iFast non user friendly to retail clients. With these shortcomings, it's hard for iFast to better compete with other brokers, despite its lower commission.

(06-01-2020, 11:25 AM)Sumeria Wrote: Being a client of iFast, I have experienced various problems with regards to its trading platform. For eg, now and then the site will have extremely slow response time when keying in an order. When the problem arises, it can take as long as 8 to 10 seconds for an order to go through. This results in a client missing trades due to slow execution. The site also requires more steps than necessary to confirm an order compared to sites at the broking house I use. The need to key in password for each order, additional steps to acknowledge that you have shares in the CDP in order to sell shares not kept with iFast, need to select which account (cash or "park and earn", even though you don't subscribe for such an account) to pay your purchase with, etc, all add to the wasted seconds needed to execute a trade. So, unless you want to don't mind speed and the additional steps, you will find iFast non user friendly to retail clients. With these shortcomings, it's hard for iFast to better compete with other brokers, despite its lower commission.

Thanks Sumeria for sharing your experience on iFast. In recent years, I usually trade only using utrade(trying to be a minimalist).

While utrade is more straightfwd than iFast, I find it extremely annoying to re-key in the same price/quantity/counter unfilled orders every day. Yes, a password is required for each order and I may need to chg settlement currency to SGD sometimes(for foriegn counters when there's insufficient foreign currency balance). On some days when I am busy, I may forget to re-key in. While it is ok to re-key for a few days, some of my orders require weeks/months to be fulfilled !!

I don't understand why online brokers cannot implement a "carry fwd" option, i.e. my order remains everyday until fulfilled/amended by the user or a mass copy and paste.  

Does fellow buddies have the same pet peeve ?

(06-01-2020, 06:52 PM)dreamybear Wrote: I don't understand why online brokers cannot implement a "carry fwd" option, i.e. my order remains everyday until fulfilled/amended by the user or a mass copy and paste.  

Does fellow buddies have the same pet peeve ?

UOB KH has a Good-To-Date option, allowing for orders to be carried forward until a future expiry date. It appears when you right click and select Buy (Advanced) or Sell (Advanced).

IIRC Maybank Kim Eng has a similar feature.