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  • Saxo Bolsters APAC Growth Strategy with New Institutional Business Head

    Saxo Bolsters APAC Growth Strategy with New Institutional Business Head

    Saxo, a leading digital broker, has named Gift Muthita Anankaphannan as their new Regional Head of Institutional Business for Asia-Pacific, in a move to strengthen their foothold in a prime market. Anankaphannan will be based in Singapore, and her role will involve leading the institutional business throughout the Asia-Pacific region while partnering with clients to enhance the offerings of Saxo.

    Anankaphannan’s Wealth of Experience

    Anankaphannan has an impressive career history, having previously served as a Senior Relationship Manager at Saxo. She brings over 16 years of experience spanning both the technology and institutional financial services sectors.

    Before her tenure at Saxo, she spent over a decade at Google, holding senior positions in sales, product strategy, and go-to-market execution, with her work encompassing AI-powered solutions. Anankaphannan kick-started her career in financial services at Bloomberg, where she specialized in equities and equity derivatives. Here, she provided data-driven insights to traders, analysts, and portfolio managers.

    Mahesh Sethuraman, the CEO of Saxo Singapore, praised Anankaphannan’s extensive experience with institutional partners and her deep understanding of Saxo’s FinTech DNA. He cited her excellent ability to foster long-term client relationships and lead high-performance teams.

    Saxo’s Institutional Business Growth

    Institutional clients make up a significant portion of Saxo’s international business, contributing to nearly one-third of the group’s overall income. Over the past year, the number of global institutional end-clients witnessed a 23 percent growth.

    Saxo recently collaborated with Singapore’s Trust Bank to roll out TrustInvest, a unique in-app investment tool that enables users to directly trade US stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) via the Trust Bank app, with investments starting from a minimum of $10.

    Anankaphannan’s main role will be to steer the next stage of Saxo’s institutional growth in the Asia-Pacific. She stated that the region remains a crucial growth market for Saxo, and the company is dedicated to further scaling their institutional offering in the region.

    Questions & Answers

    What is Gift Muthita Anankaphannan’s new role in Saxo?
    She is the new Regional Head of Institutional Business for Asia-Pacific at Saxo.

    What is Anankaphannan’s professional background?
    She has over 16 years of experience in the technology and institutional financial services sectors, having previously worked at companies like Google and Bloomberg.

    What efforts is Saxo making to grow their institutional business?
    Saxo is focusing on enhancing their offerings and has recently launched an in-app investment tool called TrustInvest in collaboration with Trust Bank.

  • Saxo Bank Aims for the Crown in Switzerland

    Saxo Bank Aims for the Crown in Switzerland

    Saxo Bank Switzerland is launching a new platform, introducing new products, and enticing customers with special offers during the U.S. elections, all in a bid to dethrone Swissquote. This move adds fresh competition to an already highly contested market.

    Since the collapse of Flowbank, it has become clear that competing in the Swiss digital banking market is no easy feat.

    Founded in 2020, Flowbank was closed by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) this past June due to insufficient capital and the management’s inability to meet minimum capital requirements. By the end of last year, FINMA noted significant and serious violations of these requirements.

    To succeed in Switzerland, financial institutions need resilience and significant capital. While incomes in Switzerland are high compared to neighboring countries, the market is small, especially in wealth management. Providers are relying on low fees and sophisticated software to attract clients, enhancing user experience, which demands substantial investment. In simple terms: size equals success.

    Saxo Bank Switzerland, led by CEO Stanislav Kostyukhin and Deputy CEO/COO Oliver Buomberger, is now turning up the heat in this battle. Saxo’s client base has grown by 43 percent, though the bank has not disclosed exact numbers. The firm also introduced a product initiative and showcased its new platform, described by Kostyukhin as a «robust Volvo» rather than the «Lamborghini» of its predecessor. The platform offers a simplified interface aimed at investors making informed decisions without the advanced tools often requested by traders. Additionally, Saxo has launched AutoInvest, enabling clients to set up automated ETF investment plans without fees for ETF purchases, monthly charges, or minimum deposits.

    New clients can also trade the 100 most popular U.S. stocks without fees until the end of the year as part of the U.S. Election Campaign, targeting the heightened market sensitivity around the U.S. elections. «Nothing is truly free,» said Kostyukhin, which is why this offer is time-limited. Nonetheless, Saxo expects this campaign to drive additional client growth.

    Kostyukhin acknowledges that Saxo is not yet Switzerland’s number one, but that’s the goal — specifically, to challenge Swissquote, the long-time leader in Swiss online banking.

  • Saxo Bank Partners with Zurich Fintech Leonteq

    Saxo Bank is enhancing its structured investment product offerings through a strategic collaboration with Leonteq.

    Leonteq and Saxo Bank have initiated a partnership focused on the development and distribution of structured products, as announced by both companies on Tuesday. Under this agreement, Saxo Bank will take on the role of a sponsor within a standardized white-label issuance model developed by Leonteq while also managing the distribution of these financial products.

    Moreover, Leonteq has secured an international distribution mandate from Saxo Bank, granting the firm access to Saxo’s global distribution network. The first structured products, backed by Saxo Bank, are expected to be available on the Leonteq platform by 2025, subject to regulatory approval.

    Focus on the Swiss market

    Leonteq also intends to feature Saxo Bank-backed structured products on its digital investment platform.

    «The partnership with Leonteq marks a significant step for Saxo Bank in expanding our structured investment product offerings, particularly for our rapidly growing Swiss client base. This collaboration represents a genuine win-win situation,» stated Kim Fournais, CEO of Saxo Bank.

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  • Saxo Bank: Female Investors Pile In to Stocks

    Saxo Bank: Female Investors Pile In to Stocks

    Inflation has finally managed what banks have been trying to for years – get women investors into equities, CEO George Falkner said.

    Everything is becoming more expensive but I am not getting anything on my account: George Falkner has been hearing that often. Although he has only been running the Swiss online arm of Danish lender Saxo Bank since last December, he has dealt with the pandemic, the Ukraine war, rising interest rates – and higher inflation. According to him, those same factors are driving his clients and an increasing proportion of them are women.

    One-third of our new clients are female», the CEO said, who finds himself running a pure-play digital bank after a career in investment and private banking. Inflation appears to be a driving impulse, he observes. They want to understand the forces that are driving inflation and figure out how to protect their assets against it.

    We see that women investors are more long-term oriented and not as interested in trading, Falkner conveys. They also appear to be particularly interested in material assets such as precious metals.

    That fits in well with the investment business that Saxo wants to build up in Switzerland. Although trading remains the online bank’s most important pillar, it is also on the look for revenues from medium- and long-term-oriented investors. Inflation has been a surprising driver in all of that as it attracts a younger – and more female – clientele.

    According to Falkner, Saxo Switzerland has been registering twice as many new investment clients as trading clients, with first-quarter 2022 revenues being up 15 percent from a year earlier.

    Looking back at 2021, he remembers how almost couldn’t onboard everyone, Falkner indicates. Yet purely from a performance perspective, 2021 was weaker than a year earlier, as the bank reported Wednesday. Net profit fell slightly to 7.7 million Swiss francs ($7.9 million). Operating revenues fell to 22.1 million francs from 25.3 million a year earlier. According to Falkner, that is partly due to the acquisition of Strateo, a domestic competitor.

    Saxo has also been drawing younger investors through its white label partnership with robo-advisors such as Selma Finance, Truewealth, and Invoya, which use it as a trading platform, and which are growing strongly. Some are seeing several hundred new clients a month, he says. It also comes after a long dry spell for bot-driven managers in 2019.

    This has all led to Switzerland becoming the third best market for the Scandinavian group, according to Falkner. In May, he wants to start testing something Saxo has been doing in Denmark – holding evening investment seminars for women. He wants to hold the first in a flower shop and he already has more than 200 guests signed up. But he himself will not be going, he emphasizes, as the event is women only.

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  • Saxo Bank Taps Another Veteran of UBS

    Saxo Bank Taps Another Veteran of UBS

    The bank’s Swiss arm is enlisting the services of a 37-year veteran of Swiss heavyweight UBS.

    Saxo Bank is adding Claudius Sutter to its board of directors, it said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. Sutter takes over for Tino Gaberthuel, who is not standing for reelection.

    The move is noteworthy because Sutter spent 37 years at UBS’ private bank, including several helping develop Smartwealth, a digital wealth manager the Swiss bank launched in the U.K., then abandoned three years ago.

    Saxo’s Swiss bank is overseen by Andreas Amschwand, also a veteran of UBS. The Swiss banker ran UBS’ foreign exchange operations for nearly 25 years, before leaving for a board seat at Julius Baer and later the chair of Seba, along with Sygnum one of Switzerland’s first crypto banks.

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  • Saxo Markets Appoints Hong Kong CEO

    Saxo Markets Appoints Hong Kong CEO

    Copenhagen-headquartered Saxo Markets has internally promoted a new chief executive for Hong Kong.

    Richard Douglas has been named Hong Kong CEO for Saxo Markets, effective immediately, according to a statement, reporting to APAC CEO Adam Reynolds.

    Douglas was most recently chief operating officer and chief information officer for Greater China and the role will be succeeded by Patrick Chung who will be responsible for all tech staff, platforms, and deliverables in the region while reporting to Saxo Bank chief information officer Ashok Kalyanswamy.

    Douglas has 18 years of experience, including six years in Hong Kong, having previously worked at the investment banking units of Macquarie, Nomura, Citi and UBS in London, Sydney, and Hong Kong.

    As part of the reshuffle, Greater China CEO Fan Xu will shift to a new role of CEO for Chongqing-based Saxo FinTech, a joint venture with Chinese automobile giant and majority shareholder Geely.

    China country head Echo Zhao will be leaving Saxo Group.

    «We believe that scaling and growing our Hong Kong business is critical to achieving our broader ambitions in the region, including building a strong partnership business,» said Saxo Bank CEO and founder Kim Fournais.

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  • Saxo Launches Crypto FX Trading in Singapore

    Saxo Launches Crypto FX Trading in Singapore

    Saxo Markets customers in Singapore will be able to trade in major cryptocurrencies as FX spot pairs.

    The online trading and investment platform’s new cryptocurrency offering enables customers to trade bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin against EUR, USD, and JPY from a single margin account, Saxo announced in a statement on Wednesday.

    Clients can trade and hedge both long and short exposure in the three cryptocurrencies, which will be in the form of derivatives and not the actual coins.

    Pairing cryptocurrencies with FX makes it more appealing to investors who are more active in the market as it offers a trusted and secure way to trade cryptos, Saxo said.

    Trading via ETNs for example lets more investors access this product in a way that works for their portfolio and makes the most of its volatility. It’s also fundamentally less risky than using cryptocurrency wallets where access can, and has, been lost to dramatic effect, Adam Reynolds, Asia Pacific CEO, Saxo Markets, said in the announcement.

    According to Saxo, its existing range of over 30 different cryptocurrency trackers and ETNs, which so far this year have seen trading volumes exceeding the entire turnover for the whole of 2020 –  a year in which volumes surged 130 percent.