Saigon Asset Management (SAM) has entered an investment and strategic tie-up deal with digital brokerage fintech Anfin.
The size of the investment wasn’t disclosed in the announcement Tuesday. But previous investments in the brokerage, founded in June 2021, included $510,000 in October from Global Founders Capital, First Check Ventures and R2 Venture Partners, followed by another $125,000 from Y-Combinator in November. In January, Anfin raised $1.2 million in a seed round from investors including Global Founders Capital, First Check Ventures and Goodwater Capital, according to an e27 report. The CEOs of Gojek, Zalora, Stripe, Google and Grab also participated via XA Network, the e27 report said, noting Anfin has also received angel investments from unnamed directors at Temasek and Coinbase.
Under the deal, SAM’s portfolio of investment funds will be offered on Anfin’s stock-trading app, and the two will work with other institutional investors on future investment rounds, the companies said in a press release.
Seeking Foreign Funds
Phuoc Tran, co-founder and CEO of Anfin, said in the statement the deal would provide his company with more opportunities to establish connections with foreign investment funds.
«This is part of our ambition to promote financial literacy to Vietnam’s new and young investors,» he said.
The investment from SAM follows a surge in market trading interest by Vietnamese retail investors, with data from the Vietnam Securities Depository showing more than 4.4 million domestic accounts opened as of end-January, up from more than 1.6 million at the end of January 2021, the statement said. Vietnam’s government has a goal of increasing stock brokerage penetration to 5 percent of the population by 2025, from 3 percent in 2021, the release said.
Potential Growth
Vietnam has a population of more than 102 million, according to the CIA World Factbook, with its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in 2020 rising to $8,200, from $7,600 in 2017.
The country can offer huge potential market growth for fintechs.
Around 49 million of Vietnam’s adults are unbanked – or don’t have a bank account at all – and around 7 million are underbanked, with a bank account, but without access to credit, investments and insurance, according to the e-Conomy SEA 2019 report published by Google, Temasek and Bain & Co. in October 2019, prior to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Around 15 million of Vietnam’s adults are considered fully banked, the report said.
Fractional Trading
According to the 2020 e-Conomy report, published in November 2020, after the start of the pandemic, Vietnam’s monthly active user growth for select mobile banking apps surged 73 percent for the January-to-September period.
Fully digital brokerage Anfin is targeting Vietnam’s market via an app offering securities and wealth management products which allow fractional share trading, which lower the minimum investment levels. The app also has added exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from Dragon Capital, SSI and Vinacapital to its products, the release said.
The starting investment on the platform is at VND10,000, or less than $1.
Louis Nguyen, also known as «Shark Louis,» chairman and CEO of SAM, said he saw opportunity in providing «low cost, high volume» access to the stock market.
