President Hwang Sung-ho of Woori Investment and Securities Co. said a blue ocean market has opened for the securities industry with the arrival of the mobile market. “We have been doing our best to provide the best service in the mobile trading system (MTS) area through the development of reformative services to our customers to keep our top ranking in the area,” he said.

The CEO made the statement in answer to the company’s winning the Integrated Grand Award in the 2012 Korea MTS Evaluation Grand Award, the first such award, co-hosted by the Korea Economic Daily and the Korea App Fusion Industry Council.

Hwang went on to say that the progress of mobile phone technology has made it possible for any securities investors to make direct investments in securities through mobile phones from anywhere.

He said its outstanding accessibility as mobile equipment could lead the market to explosive growth in the future. In the case of MTS in particular, it has already been part of the home trading system service, but it would not stop there; it will be able to provide the same quality service as the home trading system (HTS) in the end, he said.

Hwang said ‘mug smart’ has been planned and developed for the sake of customers from the early stages as a mobile securities service. What appeals the most to the customers has been that it has created a platform integrating diverse businesses and services into one mobile app so that the customer can use it easily, not separating them by an app, playing a huge role in upgrading customer satisfaction levels, the CEO said.

Eventually, he plans to make ‘mug smart’ capable of providing total cloud service to customers as a mobile platform where the customers can store their information in the cloud and use it anytime, anywhere in the patterns of services of their choice.

He said customers’ evaluations of mobile service is that it is fast and cool and, therefore, “We will take time to find out what the customers want from the mobile service so that we can provide top-class services.”

The emergence of MTS has begun to change the paradigm for securities’ trading systems and launched a war without a shot being fired among securities firms to secure a dominant position in the stock market.

The Korea Exchange said the shares exchanged through MTS grew to 6.28 percent of total securities traded daily in September last year, up from 3.1 percent at the beginning of the year. As of the end of this April, the share rose to 6.92 percent.

It’s the same at the Kosdaq market, too. MTS shares rose to 10.14 percent in September last year, up from 5.71 percent early in the year, and it again jumped to 13.74 percent this April.

The number of smart phone owners in Korea exceeded half of total phone owners with 26.72 million people using smart phones, accounting for 50.48 percent of total mobile phone owners.

The operations style of securities firms has also changed with the arrival of the smart phone age and with the era of HTS users placing orders for shares on the stock market floors coming to an end. The percentage of shares traded on the HTS last year came to 41 percent on the Korea Exchange and 75 percent on the Kosdaq last year.

Hwang, a management major from Korea University, has served as a CEO for 23 out of the 33 years in his business career, which began when he joined the Citibank Seoul Branch in 1979.

Woori Investment and Securities began in 1969 as Hanbo Securities and, as the largest securities firm in Korea, has been playing a leading role in the development of the Korean capital markets ever since. The company is strengthening its fundamentals to grow into a premiere financial investment institution by solidifying its market leadership in its core business areas. 

Through an investment banking-type business model based on IB, trading, and wealth management, coupled with an advanced risk management system, Woori Investment & Securities pursues stable growth and enjoys synergy created with the affiliates of the Woori Financial Group, especially Woori Bank, which has an extensive overseas operational network.