From left, Kim Fournais, co-founder and CEO of Saxo Bank, and Xu Fan, its chief executive in China. Photo: Tory Ho
Source:
https://scmp.com/business/article/3003705/coming-soon-geely-car-near-you-danish-bank-saxos-retail-trading-platform Banking & Finance
Geely’s Saxo Bank unit offers to help build a financial ecosystem for customers, keeping abreast with China’s market liberalisation
- Company wants Chinese investors to access 40,000 financial instruments trading on its platforms through dashboard app
- CEO says Saxo Bank wants to help Geely, 51 per cent shareholder in the company, expand its retail auto finance business
A Geely car is unveiled at the 2018 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition. Saxo Bank has already made headway in testing a prototype app in Geely cars in China. Photo: Simon Song
Saxo Bank, the Danish financial technology company owned by China’s largest non-state carmaker Zhejiang Geely Holding, wants to help investors access the 40,000 financial instruments that are trading globally, in line with the liberalisation of the Chinese financial markets.
Those financial instruments comprising stocks, bonds, exchange-traded funds, foreign exchange, futures and options can be accessible via Saxo’s multi-asset trading platform, its core business. Saxo is also helping its parent Geely expand the auto finance business for retail customers, said its founder and chief executive officer Kim Fournais.
“Geely has a lot of ambition in building a broader financial ecosystem in China, which I believe wants to expand on from its existing offerings in car loans and leasing services,” Fournais said in an interview this week. “Hopefully, we can play an important part in enabling that ambition, once we get the required local licences.”
In fact, Fournais has an idea which may fit in snugly with Geely’s ambition of transforming its future models into all-electric, 5G-enabled cars that can connect to the internet. Working through Apple’s CarPlay standard, Saxo is able to let customers access its financial services platform through voice command.
A prototype has already been tested on a vehicle fitted with CarPlay, Fournais said. Geely and its sibling brand Volvo have fitted all their latest models with the Apple standard that enables car radios or head units to be used as displays or controllers through iOS devices.
“Geely’s investment in Saxo underlines its trust in our understanding in the areas of fintech and regtech. Chairman Li [Shufu]’s vision is aligned with that of Saxo’s and our parent is helping us navigate the Chinese market,” Fournais said.
Fournais admitted that Saxo, with 30 employees in Shanghai, was a latecomer to China, but that it was aiming to become the “Amazon of finance” in China and globally. With this goal in mind, the bank hired Xu Fan, a 20-year Chinese banking industry veteran who was most recently the chief investment officer at Citic Prudential Life Insurance, in January as chief executive in China.
“We are working with Chinese banks and brokers, as we can be their fintech partner, helping them build their digital platform. They do not have to build everything from scratch,” said Xu.
Fournais said Saxo’s priority at the moment was offering Chinese investors trading services for domestic and international financial products. The bank’s team in Shanghai, led by Xu, was working on obtaining various licences, ranging from securities and futures trading permits to potentially a banking licence.
The bank is already helping international investors trade Chinese A shares listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen through the stock connect mechanism in Hong Kong. It is also helping offshore investors trade yuan bonds through the bond connect mechanism.
In Hong Kong, Saxo Capital Markets – the local unit of Saxo – is planning to apply for an asset management licence, which will let it use robo-advisory and help distribute fund products from other global asset managers.
(Corrects March 28 story to clarify that the interactive platform used to drive applications is Apple’s CarPlay standard)