Evaluations on Website: http://www.uobkayhian.com.sg/
Strategy: Click-&-Mortar
Business Model: Transaction Broker
Category of E-Commerce: B2C & B2B
1. B2C (Business-to-Consumer)
- B2C describes activities of commercial organisations serving the end consumer with products and/or services. Usually, the term is applied exclusively to E-Commerce.
- Hence, in the case of UOBKayhian, they have a E-trading and information portal that provides a platform for their customer to access to information services and to allow them to trade with the different financial products such as shares, futures, warrants and ETFs electronically through the internet.
2. B2B (Business-to-Business)
- B2B describes the transaction of goods and/or services between businesses which usually takes the form of automated processes between business partners.
- On the surface, the business seems to have only a front-end eCommerce of B2C.
- However, it also has a backend eCommerce of a B2B.
- This is so because ultimately, for clients to make trade orders through the brokerage portal, they need to have sufficient money in their bank accounts.
- Hence, the brokerage house has to have its trading and information system linked to the respective banks' system to allow for debit and credit of the customer's account to complete the buy or sell orders.
- Therefore, the linkages of systems help to facilitate the UOB brokering house in validating customer's availability of funds.
- The securities firm also has its system linked with The Central Depository (Pte) Limited system as clients’ shares bought from the securities market through UOB Kayhian has to be credited into their CDP account.
Introduction:
This website basically allows registered users to buy / sell their shares through UOB Kayhian online, just as though they are performing the transactions through a broker.
Features:
- Real-time Live Streaming Prices (Information from SGX)
- RAT (timely, accurate & relevant)
- Real-time market information
- (Market segregated into different industries / indices) 
- Raw Data processed into Information
- 5 personalized Watchlist for monitoring of specific stocks
- Allows user to rename each Watchlist and add specific stocks into different Watchlist
- Electronic Order Placement (To buy/sell stocks)
- Order Book which shows the status of your order (unlike offline trading where you depend on your broker to inform you)
- Stock Alert (alert users when certain parameters for certain stock is satisfied through email or website pop-up)
- Allows users to select different trading account
- Portfolio allows user to keep track of the contracts of stocks they have on hand (Transactory)
- Automatically calculates the average price of stocks for users
- Shows P&L at real-time according to the live prices
- Up-to-Date Information allows user to make informed decisions based on news and statistics happening around the financial world (Cognitive)
- Calculator – allows user to input prices for shares bought and sold to calculate P&L (Input-Process-Output-Feedback)
- Users can know the actual amount of P&L per transaction after brokerage fees (reduces uncertainty)
- Provides a Share Margin Financing (SMF) feature which in essence is a credit facility offered to clients to boost their investments in shares using cash and/or marginal securities as collateral. (i.e. borrowing)
Methods of Payment:
- Cash or Cheque at selected UOB front offices
- EPS via the ATM or Internet Banking. Electronic Payment for Shares (EPS) facilitates the transfer of funds between designated bank accounts of investors and their stock-broking companies.
- GIRO through DBS/POSB, UOB Bank accounts
- Bill Payment via Internet Banking
- Trust Account that is maintained with UOBKH to facilitate settlement for your share transactions
Advantages:
For UOBKayhian
- The online trading and information system allows the securities firm to process more trade orders at any given point of time, therefore cutting down on turnaround time and opportunity cost.
- Through this information system, Kayhian is able to provide live prices, up-to-date information and analyst reports on the market outlook to their clients. This will allow them keep clients updated and better informed, which may influence their decision to increase their activity in the market.
- Able to have a greater reach over time and space to more people as nowadays, everything is done through the internet. The client could be anywhere in the world, so long as he/she has an internet connection, they would be able to make trade orders at any time. And if the securities market is closed for the day, customers are able to place overnight trade orders which will be processed by the system first thing the market reopens.
- Hence, through implementation of this trading platform which runs on an intricate and complex set of systems and data warehousing, the securities firm enjoys an increasing number of clients, which will generate higher volume (transactions) and ultimately will result in an increase in revenue.
For Client:
- Cheaper brokerage fees as compared to trading through Broker
- Access to Live Prices
- Users can “refresh” the status of their order
- Not necessary to depend on Broker for transaction
- IS allows user to make informed decisions with accessible information
- provides customer with an alternative trading channel to trade in regional exchanges via the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Disadvantages:
- The online trading site is subjected to Internet Security. For example, the customer’s computer may be affected with a virus or a Trojan horse that keeps all User ID and Passwords keyed in the system and sends the information to the so called hacker. Hacker may then go online and hack into the customer’s trading account and make bogus trades. Technically, this is possible as information keyed will always be stored somewhere in the computer memory even though the user of the computer may have cleared the cache. Only when the computer is turned off, then data stored in memory will disappear.
- If the online trading system breaks down, customers may incur opportunity cost due to the downtime. Moreover, with such large numbers of customers using the trading portal, if there happens to be a downtime and the firm does not have a backup systems or plans, then the securities firm will be flooded with phone calls from customers to make transaction via the phone, adding on to the time cost of the firm and customers. One good example would be Merrill Lynch during the 911 terrorist attack. Located at the 96th floor, after the World Trade Centre was hit, despite the chaos, Merrill Lynch got into work mode again in just 4 hours.
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