Vietnam

Anfin and Saigon Asset Management (SAM) announce Investment and Strategic Partnership

AM will become an equity investor into Anfin as well as a strategic partner. Following this agreement, both firms will collaborate to leverage SAM’s diverse portfolio of investment funds to expand assets offered on Anfin's stock trading app, bolster corporate governance, and work with other institutional investors on future investment rounds.

This expansion is poised to capitalise on increased interest in trading by Vietnamese retail investors, alongside a government push to do the same. Latest statistics from the Vietnam Securities Depository show over 4.4 million domestic investor trading accounts opened as of 31 January 2022, an increase of over 1.6 million new accounts from 31 January 2021. The Vietnamese government aims to increase stock brokerage penetration rate to 5% and 10% by 2025 and 2030 respectively from the current rate of 3% in 2021.

Anfin is Vietnam’s first fully digital broker, providing a mobile friendly app to deliver the next generation of tradable securities and wealth management products. Outdated mobile experiences paired with high minimums required for purchasing stock creates an opportune moment for Anfin to be a disruptor in the brokerage industry.  Anfin’s trading app offers an unparalleled user experience focusing on new retail investors. Learning, trading, and sharing establishes a proven flywheel of behaviors that are vital to the investment journey. Anfin offers real-time fractional share trading that makes buying expensive 100-lot blue chip stocks more affordable. Recently, Anfin added ETFs by Dragon Capital, SSI, and Vinacapital to their selection of products - giving users more products to diversify their portfolios.

 

Phuoc Tran, Co-founder and CEO of Anfin said, “ This strategic partnership with SAM will open more opportunities for Anfin to approach and establish connections with foreign investment funds.  This  is part of our ambition to promote financial literacy to Vietnam’s new and young investors. With SAM as our strategic investor, which has nearly 15 years of experience with outstanding achievements in fund management, we believe that Anfin will learn from the company’s expertise and also from Shark Louis as our advisor to be able to scale and grow our business even further.”

 

Mr. Michael Do, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Anfin said, “Co-operating with SAM will help Anfin further diversify and create a range of new financial products and services on our platform that we want to offer to our users. We believe that our team will be able to build stronger capabilities in our strategic partnership with SAM who has a wealth of experience as a group managing investment funds across diverse sectors. Both our teams will be working closely together to create a more sustainable asset management ecosystem for retail investors in Vietnam.”

 

In responding to the rationale behind the investment and partnership with Anfin, Mr. Louis Nguyen (aka “Shark Louis”), Chairman and CEO of SAM commented: “Vietnam’s stock market was the seventh biggest gainer in 2021 at 36%, outperforming many regional peers. Last year was the third year in a row that the Vietnam-Index went up. With price-to-earnings ratio of 17, the Vietnam market is very attractive, especially combined with GDP year over year growth. We see great opportunities and scale in this space of low cost, high volume access to the stock market. We also have great confidence in Anfin’s senior management team as they have the vision and experience to carry out this mission of equalizing the playing field to all investors. We are pleased to be an investor and seek to assist in creating long term value to Anfin, its customers, and investors.”