It has been a long, expensive slog for Malaysian retail investors who wanted to buy shares outside the country. Each foreign exchange meant a new brokerage account. Each account meant a fresh set of fees.
The costs piled up fast. Standard Chartered Malaysia says it has cut through that mess.
On September 3, 2022, the bank launched SmartStocks, a single online trading platform that lets clients trade on 12 exchanges across seven global markets from one account. One login. One brokerage rate.
For the bank’s Priority Private clients, that rate can hit zero percent. The move is part of a broader push by Standard Chartered to strengthen its wealth management offerings and capture the affluent segment.
Sammeer, the bank’s managing director and head of consumer, private, and business banking in Malaysia, said the bank is focused on further digitizing banking services for personal banking customers. He noted that Malaysian retail investors still face “huge concern” over high transaction fees when trying to access global markets.
SmartStocks gives those investors a direct line to Bursa Malaysia, the Singapore Exchange, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, US OTC, BATS Global Markets, the Australian Stock Exchange, the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and the SIX Swiss Exchange. That is ten exchanges in seven markets, all from within Malaysia. The platform is a one-stop shop.
It is meant to make diversification into foreign stocks both convenient and affordable. For years, Malaysian investors who wanted to buy a US tech stock or a Swiss pharmaceutical had to either go through a local intermediary or open a separate overseas account.
Both routes came with high costs and paperwork. Standard Chartered is betting that removing those barriers will draw in more affluent clients. The bank has been under pressure to modernize its personal banking services.
Digitization is the stated path forward. SmartStocks is a concrete step on that path.
The timing matters. Global markets have been volatile. Inflation is high.
Interest rates are rising. Investors are looking for ways to spread risk across different economies and currencies. A single platform that offers access to Asian, American, European, and Australian exchanges gives them that spread without the usual friction.
Sammeer did not say how many clients the bank expects to sign up. He did not disclose the investment behind the platform.
But the logic is clear: lower the cost, raise the convenience, and the customers will come. For now, SmartStocks is live. The exchanges are open.
Malaysian retail investors have a new way in.
{“@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “NewsArticle”, “headline”: “Standard Chartered Malaysiau2019s SmartStocks Cuts Fees for Global Trading”, “description”: “It has been a long, expensive slog for Malaysian retail investors who wanted to buy shares outside the country. Each foreign exchange meant a new brokerage acco”, “datePublished”: “2022-09-03T15:00:00+00:00”, “author”: {“@type”: “Person”, “name”: “InfoPulse Today”}, “publisher”: {“@type”: “Organization”, “name”: “InfoPulse Today”}}
