NEW SCB Online Trading Platform + Mobile Application

I received an SMS from Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) on 11th July stating that they will be upgrading their Online Trading platform. That was a piece of good news and I was really looking forward to it. Everyone knows that SCB apart from being cheap (lowest/no minimum commission), their trading platform has the worst user interface (it feels as though you have travel 10 years back in time whenever you use it, really hard to come by such website nowadays) and there is no mobile application! Being a KPO, I tell myself, you get what you pay for (一分钱，一分货). Cannot complain when they are offering the lowest commission in the market BUT not anymore?

Today (17th July), I received another SMS from them stating that the platform has been upgraded and a mobile application can be downloaded from the respective app store! I was also alerted by one of the readers (save4arainyday88) on the same day.

When I log in to it, I was stunned! At one glance, it has become so beautiful and yet complicated!

Default Landing Page - Portfolio & Trades

There are 8 different tabs with multiple customizable widgets in each tab (I have taken a screenshot for each of them and will be providing some commentary):
1. Portfolio & Trades
2. Quotes & Alerts
3. Indices
4. Stock Summary
5. News
6. Calculator
7. Loyalty
8. Announcement

1. Portfolio & Trades (Maximize Portfolio Widget)

There are 3 widgets in this tab (Portfolio, Place Order and Orders). I was extremely interested in the Portfolio widget as it seems that they are FINALLY showing PnL for your stocks. Once I looked closely, the PnL is not accurate at all >.<" Given that this is newly implemented, I will give them some time to fix. There are other fields such as your average price of the stock (which is wrong too), the commission fee, etc. There is also a disclaimer/notes explaining what the respective fields are. Within the widget, you can also access your Realized transaction (mine is empty which is obviously wrong too!) and Trade History. Hopefully, the new users would not have this issue?

Important Notes:

1. This is an indicative display of your current securities holdings in your Standard Chartered Bank (Singapore) Limited ("SCBSL") securities account. The tool may not immediately reflect adjustments to your portfolio arising from corporate actions. Please click on "Refresh Data" on the right menu to refresh your portfolio.
2. "Avg Price" - Indicative average security purchase costs (including fees).
3. "Available Bal" - Refers to the quantity of securities held in your securities account which may be sold.
4. "Amount" - Indicative invested amount (including fees) in the security portfolio.
5. "Last" - Security prices displayed here are indicative. They may differ from the live prices.
6. "Value" - Indicative market value of the security portfolio.
7. "Fee" - Indicative fee for selling all such holdings in the specific securities counter held in your securities account, calculated based on 'Last' price.
8. "P/L" - Indicative unrealised profit/ loss (including fees) of the security portfolio.
9. "LTV Value" - The LTV Values are indicative amounts only and are subject to immediate changes by SCBSL at its sole discretion. They indicate the maximum credit limit made available to you when you apply for a secured wealth lending facility. Please contact your RM or the nearest branch to confirm your eligibility and other requirements. Subject to market conditions, leveraging may increase your potential gains or magnitude of losses as compared to investing without leveraging.
10. SCBSL accepts no liability whatsoever for any losses or damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this tool.

Having the Place Order widget next to it is going to be helpful too because one can now easily reference and confirm the stock code you want to buy/sell and the bid/ask price is correct. Previously, the order page is on a separate page and I always worry that I will key in the wrong information. lol.

2. Quotes & Alerts

In the tab, there are 3 widgets too (Quotes/Watchlist, Alerts and Alert Settings). Quotes/Watchlist is where you can apply filter such as "Top Volumes", "Top Gainers", etc and scan for stocks. You can also have up to 10 watchlists as compared to 5 previously but wait a minute, my previous watchlists are gone!! SCBBBBB!!!!! It seems that you can now configure various alerts when a particular stock hits your ideal price (I have yet to give that a try, have been using other mobile apps to do that).

3. Indices

This tab provides access to the indices around the world as well as an ETF/ETN/Funds quick filter. Another cool feature is that one can now draw/look at charts in the platform itself - the perfect tool for the chartists/TA guys!

4. Stock Summary

Stock Summary provides you with information such as Market Depth (do note that it is delayed) and financial statements (Income, Balance and Cashflow). I have yet to look at it in detail but I am guessing it is pretty similar to what SGX StockFacts is providing.

5. News

News is quite self-explanatory. You will be able to filter based on the type of news, the market or even a particular stock. I believe this was present in the previous platform but I hardly use it.

6. Calculator

A calculator to compute your commission fee, breakeven sell price, etc. Nothing fascinating.

7. Loyalty

This is something new! SCB has come up with a loyalty program which allows one to exchange the reward points for real time market data (some brokers provide it for free while others provide it for a fee). Does one need real time market data? I guess it depends on the usage, I have been using SCB for at 3/4 years and have never really found it an issue since I do not trade in and out of the market. Unfortunately, I could not find any additional information on how the reward points will be awarded (number of transactions or amount transacted? Nobody knows).

8. Announcement

Update on 18th July: Thanks to save4arainyday88 again! It seems I have missed the announcement! They are running an iPad promotion/giveaway and all you need to do is download and login to the mobile trading application. The promotion is from 17th July to 25th July 2017 and is limited to the first 20,000 participating users! You can refer to the T&C here.

Last but not least, if you were to head over to SCB Online Trading site, you will be able to see that they have also introduced award-winning mobile trading applications. Hmm. The mobile trading application is new and already gotten an award? That's impressive! Ownself give ownself award?? lol. KPO knows that SCB is referring to the other banking applications but is being mean to SCB for screwing up his PnL and watchlists.

Google Play - Standard Chartered Mobile Trading

Apple Store - Standard Chartered Mobile Trading

With this upgrade in their trading platform, SCB is definitely up-ing its game to remain more competitive. Even before SCB introduced the $10 minimum commission, there were already negative news such as "Standard Chartered to close Equities Business Globally" and people were speculating that SCB will eventually close the retail online trading business as well but it seems that SCB has lived up to their very reassuring slogan "Here for good". lol.

At the end of the day, always do your own research to determine which brokerage fits your needs/wants. For example, "I want my stocks to be in CDP" then SCB is definitely not for you as it is a custodian account. Do beware of hidden charges such as platform fee (New Trading Platform in SGX, iFast FSMOne - Is it any good?), custodian fee, dividend handling fee, etc.

There are a lot of articles that compare and highlights what you should look out for:

- Dollars and Sense (2017) - Singapore Stock Brokerage House Comparison 2017

- Money$mart (2016) - How to Decide Which Investment Brokerage in Singapore Is Best For You

- Motley Fool (2014) - How to Choose a Stock Brokerage Firm

Happy trading/investing! Huat ah!