Online investment firm to launch mobile app

CEBU, Philippines - Online investment company COL Financial Group Inc., is set to officially launch its mobile application in Cebu in the next few months with hopes of tapping the huge potential of stock market investors in the southern part of the country making Cebu as its gateway.

Although the mobile app is meant to serve its growing online investors all over the globe, the official introduction of this facility will be held in Cebu to emphasize its presence in this part of the country.

In a press conference, COL Financial president and chief executive officer Conrado F. Bate said that the company has seen tremendous interest in stock market investing initially from the Cebuano market owing to the increasing awareness of the young professionals in financial literacy and putting their hard-earned money to sound investment instruments such as the equity market.

Although, at present, the company's bulk of clientele is still from Metro Manila and Luzon areas, Cebu on the other hand is making significant movement in terms of interest and online stock market investment registration.

Bate said the COL Financial mobile app will give its customers access to the full features of the company's platform, including streaming market data, research and real-time charts. The iOS version is expected to roll out in the next few days and will make its full-blown implementation by July of this year.

"Personally, I am very excited for 2014 and beyond. We will continue to do what we do best - that is to provide our customers more and more ways to build genuine wealth in the stock market as we always have our customer's best interest in mind," said Bate.

These new developments are in line with COL Financial's goal of educating more Filipinos on wealth building, regardless of their location and investment objective.

The mobile application can be downloaded by iPhone user members, not through the AppleStore, but by registering via their COL account online.

Currently, the company has a total investor base of over 90 thousand, only about five percent of which are from the Visayas and Mindanao.

Aside from the introduction of its mobile app, Bate said the company is also up to offering expanded investment instruments like mutual funds, among others,

To take advantage of the growing interest of the Cebu market, including other areas in Visayas and Mindanao, Bate said the company is doing its educational awareness campaign at least twice a month starting with Cebu, while considering to put up its physical presence here.

COL posted record earnings in 2013, with consolidated operating profits growing 13.8 percent year-on-year to P386 million. Growth was driven by the 13.8 percent jump in revenues to P741 million which in turn was a result of the 16.7 percent increase in commission revenues to P540.5 million and the 7.9 percent improvement in interest income to P198.7 million.

COL's client base also maintained its rapid growth, increasing by another 78.7 percent compared to its end 2012 level of 46,166 to 82,476 as of end 2013.

Client equity handled by COL also increased significantly, exceeding the US$1 billion mark to P47.9 billion as of end 2013 from P34.4 billion as of end 2012. The statistics is a strong testament of the investing public's growing level of trust towards COL.

Bate said the strong growth in COL's client base was also largely responsible for the company's ability to maintain its position as the number one stockbroker in terms of volume of transactions handled, with a market share of 23.1 percent. (FREEMAN)