Live from the Finance Magnates Virtual Summit 2020: Understanding Asia and beyond

The all important Asia Pacific region has been a priority for many retail FX brokerages and their respective software and market integration vendors for many years now.

Today, the importance of the highly populated region with a vast appetite for online trading is as vital as ever, however things are somewhat different to how they were even five years ago.

Today, live from the Finance Magnates Virtual Summit 2020, senior executives from across the spectrum discuss the methods of understanding how to operate in today’s Asia Pacific region.

Moderated by Lea Wang of PlugIt, the panel featured Tom Higgins, CEO of Gold-i, Gavin Mak of VP Business Solutions, Mario Singh of Fullerton Markets, and Avner Ziv of Zotapay.

“What 2020 brought to us has been a huge challenge” said Ms Wang. “Speaking of the impact to our work, going virtual is one of the main things that has happened, including working from home and going digital. Has the COVID situation affected online trading?

Mr Higgins said “I think it has enormously improved digital literacy. I was having a chat with my 95 year old mother over Zoom yesterday, so indeed people have got used to sitting in front of the screen in all walks of life and therefore accessing things such as online trading. I think that even next year when we can go out again, people have been conditioned to working from home, however some things cannot be done from home. It is very difficult to actually brainstorm and work with the team while at home, however the effect of more digital literacy has changed the industry.”

“I think it will be a long lasting change” he said.

Mr Singh said “I definitely agree. The acceleration of digital literacy has exploded over the last few months. Today if you go online and type the word Ferrari, you’ll see 500 million searches on Google but if you type online trading, you’ll get several billion searches so this has exploded over the last few months.”

“Over recent months, by enlarge everyone has had to stay at home and there are many countries facing second lockdowns, even across Asia. This has driven new clients into trading. The other reason is central bank liquidity. There are so many businesses shutting down, and they’re pumping unprecedented liquidity into the banks to prop up the economy that has been destroyed by the lockdowns, therefore the stay home measures plus the added central bank liquidity has driven people into trading” said Mr Singh.

“There have also been a deluge of online gurus – however I have to say that although these are good marketers, if we do not monitor their credibility, our industry could get a bad name from people trying to make a quick buck rather than help traders genuinely understand the market” warned Mr Singh.

Mr Mak said “Everyone in China has now learned how to use WeChat, and are all becoming far more online centric due to the lockdowns. However, we expected everyone to become immediately accustomed to being online. In Asia, people are still reliant on the IB business model and they have tried to move everything from online to offline, for example having IB seminars via webinar rather than in person. They have simply changed the way of meeting clients to virtual, but I don’t think their mindset is ready to transfer all of these relationships to digital.”

“Definitely the lockdown of the daily activity has made people start looking for things to do when they are confined from home, however, so the direct retail trading area has been boosted, but that is circumstantial rather than anything else” he said.

Mr Higgins said “We have seen a rise in mental…