Freewill grabs top slot in Vietnam
(Published in The Nation Newspaper on March 27, 2008, under section Technology)

Securities software takes firm closer to revenue target.

Freewill Solutions, a local software company, has made an international foray and aims at getting majority of its revenues from the global market by next year.

It recorded its first success last year when the firm started selling its software solutions to the securities and brokerage industry in the Vietnam market.

Veera Veerakool, chief executive of Freewill Solutions, said that after starting operations in the Vietnamese market in the middle of 2006, the company has five Vietnamese brokers as its clients.
The company's focus shifted to Vietnam due to saturation in the Thai security and brokerage market. It has been operating in the Thai market since 1991 and has the largest market share. However, the brokerage industry in the Kingdom did not grow for a year and the company decided to expand to new markets to maintain its growth rate of 30 per cent.

Its solution, called SMART, is a wholly indigenous suite made for the securities industry and comprising five main components, including the Intelligent Integrated Brokerage System, the Front Office Integrated System, the Securities Back-office Automation, the Integrated Business Solution and the Electronic Bond Trading Platform.

Securities suites can be categorized as front-end and back-end solutions. Freewill has already garnered the largest market share in both areas, grabbing 55 per cent of market share in front-end and 80 per cent of the market for back-end solutions.

About 50 per cent of the volume of shares traded is being processed through the company's systems.

"The solution provided in Vietnam is a bit different. It is a newer version of the suite which we offer as an integrated version of both front-end and back-end solutions. We have grabbed about 40 per cent of the Vietnamese brokerage market - a dominant market share," Veera said.

Even though the company has only five Vietnamese brokers as customers, it claims it has the largest market share because one of those clients is Saigon Securities (SSI), the largest and most successful broker in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese Stock Exchange is seeing explosive growth. Consequently, the number of Vietnamese brokers has risen three times in one year - from 20 in 2006 to 60 last year. This year could see the number rise to 100.

Meanwhile, the overall trading volumes on the Vietnam Stock Exchange were about Bt3 million to Bt4 billion last year, almost five to six times lesser than the volumes - Bt20 billion - seen on the Stock Exchange of Thailand.

"We expect that at least 50 per cent of total trading on the Vietnam Stock Exchange will be done through our systems by the close of 2009," Veera said.

This year, the company will focus on expanding the business in Vietnam by setting up an office there. Freewill Solutions Vietnam Company Limited has been operational since January with support from Vietnam's Board of Investment.

The company will employ ten Thai and 20 Vietnamese programmers who will conduct the marketing, software localization, solution implementation and system maintenance operations.

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