Sanlam Private Investments (SPI) has introduced an online trading portal and claims to be the first financial services group in the South African insurance industry to allow investors to trade online.
For R50 a month, South African investors will be able to use the portal, Sanlam iTrade, to play the financial market, the company says.
"As the popularity of online trading grows, we are taking advantage of every opportunity to provide our clients with the most advanced technology available in order to deliver an exceptional online trading experience," says SPI CEO Dani"el Kriel.
Sanlam iTrade aims to capture 20% of the online trading market share within three years, he says.
Gerhard Lampen, head of online trading at SPI and designer of the portal, says Sanlam iTrade will offer investors an exclusive feature not available from the other share trading portals.
"We will provide clients with the ability to see all the shares of an index on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange, as well as their watch-lists and portfolios by means of MAPS, an interactive, multi-dimensional tool to view and understand multiple shares at a glance," he says.
One of the useful features of MAPS is that it represents multiple shares on a single page, with price movements reflected in colour, he says. Without having to scroll through a whole table of share price movements, investors are able to see at a glance where the big movements in the market are occurring.
Detailed price information and direct links to a share's important data and chart are also available with one mouse-click, he adds.
Other features include consensus broker forecasts, where SA's top brokers are polled for their three-year forecast of over 100 shares listed on the JSE. The poll indicates whether a share should be bought, held or sold according to their views. Lampen says clients will be able to do their own technical analyses and thoroughly research any share on the JSE.
SPI says it realises the importance of nurturing its own market. For this reason, Sanlam iTrade has a learning centre, which has training material supplemented with courses to empower existing clients to successfully manage their portfolios and attract potential new investors.
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