Horizon Targets Vietnam with HSC Contract Win

Horizon recently signed Ho Chi Minh City Securities Corporation (HSC), a brokerage and equities firm in Vietnam, that will, in a month’s time, go live with Horizon’s platform for trading warrants, futures and exchange-traded funds (ETF) market-making, as well as institutional care orders execution.

Trinh Hoai Giang, deputy CEO at HSC said in a statement, “Horizon’s technology allows us to take advantage of shifting markets, adapt quickly in an innovative industry, and to develop and update our products for our valued customers. Their platform creates the difference that enables us to build systematic trading strategies. A comprehensive offer providing a platform that can simultaneously cover a wide range of business, and has proven to be successful for warrants, futures and ETF market making in the APAC region.”

Meanwhile, Doan Chi Trung, IT director at HSC, said HSC looks forward to expanding its platform usage for institutional order management systems in the future as well. According to a forecast by PricewaterhouseCoopers in February 2017, Vietnam may be the fastest-growing of the world’s economies, with a potential annual GDP growth rate of about 5.1 percent, which would make its economy the 20th-largest in the world by 2050.

“We were quick to appreciate Vietnam’s focus and commitment to economic growth and Horizon’s trading technology and connectivity to 70+ of the world’s exchanges is providing a solid foundation (to) the financial sector to continue expanding,” says Ekaluck Chaiyaporn, Asean sales director at Horizon.

Chaiyaporn adds that there is strong potential in the growth of demand for automated trading in Vietnam. Horizon is watching the region closely in order to organize its resources to support growth. “The timing and scale of the demand is likely to be driven mostly by regulation changes and the market dynamics,” he adds.  

He explains that market and regulation specificities are key challenges. Apart from that, Horizon’s customers find it challenging to find appropriate human resources to operate derivatives and warrants, which Chaiyaporn says is new to the industry.

“When this human resources constraint is present, training and implementation takes more time,” he says.