Saigon Asset Management invests in Vietnamese FinTech firm Anfin

Vietnamese FinTech firm Anfin Company Limited announced Thursday the signing of an investment and strategic partnership agreement with Saigon Asset Management (SAM), which will see SAM becoming 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, both parties said in a statement.

This expansion is poised to capitalize 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 January 31, 2022, an increase of over 1.6 million new accounts from January 31, 2021. The Vietnamese government aims to increase stock brokerage penetration rate to 5 percent and 10 percent by 2025 and 2030 respectively from the current rate of 3 percent in 2021.

“ 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,” said Phuoc Tran, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Anfin.

Meanwhile, 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.”

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.

Its 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. It also 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.

“Vietnam’s stock market was the seventh biggest gainer in 2021 at 36 percent, 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 gross domestic product (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,” said Louis Nguyen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SAM.

Founded in 2007, SAM is a investment fund management and financial advisory company in Vietnam with more than 15 years of experience in running three investment funds and $200 million portfolios value consisting of 50 listed companies in the fields of technology, renewable energy, consumption, banking, real estate.

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