COL Financial ties up with BPI, Sun Life units

MANILA, Philippines - COL Financial Group Inc. has partnered with two of the largest asset managers in the country, allowing the leading online stockbroker to broaden its lineup of financial products.

The move will also help increase the customer base of the online brokerage firm as it offers unit investment trust funds (UITFs) and mutual funds, company officials said.

In separate disclosures, COL Financial said it entered into agreement with the asset management arm of Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and Sun Life Asset Management Co. Inc. (SLAMCI).

COL Financial said it signed a memorandum of agreements with BPI-Asset Management and Trust Group “with respect to the participation of the company in certain funds of BPI for the benefit and account of the company’s clients.”

“We will start offering in our online platform the fund of BPI, particularly UITF. This will expand the products we offer to clients,” COL Financial president and CEO Conrado Bate said in a phone interview.

COL Financial will be a distributor of BPI’s UITF, an investment scheme that allow the pooling of investors’ funds to achieve a certain objective.

Managed by professional fund managers from a bank’s trust group, UITFs are invested in various financial instruments like money market securities, bonds and equities.

“This puts us one step closer to allowing COL Financial clients to purchase funds online. This should benefit clients as it makes it easier to both buy and sell funds,” April Lee-Tan, vice-president and head of research of COL Financial.

Bate said COL Financial will help its clients pick the right funds depending on their risk profile.

For the SLAMCI partnership, COL Financial said it plans to offer mutual funds to its clients. Mutual funds are also pooled funds, but are offered by insurance and other investment companies, and regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SLAMCI is targeting an expansion in its assets under management by 20 to 30 percent to P40 billion this year, driven by more distribution channels and new products.

SLAMCI currently manages seven mutual funds under the Sun Life Prosperity family of funds, including fixed or bond fund, equity fund, balanced fund, government securities fund, money market fund, and dollar-denominated funds.

With continuing market education efforts and improvement of product offerings, COL Financial expects to grow its customer base by another 40-50 percent this year from 82,000 as of end-2013, Bate said.

Client equity handled by the brokerage firm hit the $1-billion mark or P47.1 billion at the end of the third quarter compared with P34.4 billion in December 2012.