Futu Securities boosts user experience with HSBC’s eDDA

With HSBC’s digital solutions, Futu Securities is able to offer a fully digitised brokerage service to its customers to support local HKD fund transfers and significantly enhance user experience on their online investment platform.

Founded in 2012, Futu Securities International (Hong Kong) Limited (“Futu Securities”) is the number 1 FinTech retail brokerage in Hong Kong by transaction volume*. Through Futubull, an all-encompassing digital financial services platform, Futu Securities offers customers one-stop financial services, including stock trading, clearing, financing, and wealth management services. Currently, Futubull and its sister brand moomoo have more than 20 million users* from over 200 countries and regions around the world. Futu Securities has long been committed to bringing users a better investment experience, constantly optimising its digital trading methods to fulfill its product philosophy of putting user experience first, which also complies with the digital trading trend.

*Public data, and based on Futu Securities 2023 Q1 financial report

Speed of opening and funding online trading accounts are increasingly important investor experiences. Due to the popularity of real-time payments (RTP) in HKSAR, investors expect their funds are immediately available for trading once transferred to the trading accounts.

Because market regulations require the investors to provide evidence to demonstrate they are not sourced from third-parties, Futu Securities was required to conduct verification checks on funding sources before making funds available for trading, which often delayed the trading process due to the manual nature of this process. Failure to quote investor’s account ID also impeded the crediting of funds into the trading accounts.

To support such digital initiatives, HSBC worked with Futu Securities to implement innovative solutions to facilitate their growing business:

1. Faster bank account verification
   

   Using the market's first real-time Direct Debit solution through the use of Collection API, the API integration helped Futu Securities' clients to speed up their deposit process. With one click on a single platform, existing investors now instantly fund their trading accounts with linked bank accounts, which have already been verified, eliminating the manual verification process previously undertaken. This ensured safety at first and also has reduced the average waiting time from an average of 3 days to mere seconds.

2. Real-time local fund transfers in HKD
   

   Customers can initiate a deposit instruction in the Futubull app after completing the authorisation. Funds are then deducted from the customer's bank accounts and instantly transferred to Futu's bank account (customer's trading account). After completing an automatic reconciliation, the customers will receive an immediate notification of the successful transfer.

• The direct debit solution allows funds to be applied to investors' accounts in less than 30 seconds.
• Radically streamlined and automated onboarding process, leading to lower attrition rates as new customers are less likely to drop out during application process.
• Eliminated manual reconciliation processes to match incoming funds to investors' trading accounts.