Featured Online Brokerage
HSBC InvestDirect
Attilio Montanari Vice President, HSBC InvestDirect
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SBC InvestDirect, the self-directed brokerage arm of HSBC Securities (Canada) Inc., is an online brokerage suited for globally minded investors, which provides access to 30 domestic and international markets. With HSBC InvestDirect, you can access an integrated suite of research tools and trading capabilities right at your fingertips. 2020 has been an interesting year so far, to say the least. COVID-19 has brought with it significant uncertainty to the world, and it has also brought unprecedented volumes to HSBC InvestDirect and the brokerage industry as a whole. HSBC InvestDirect has been working under a split-site protocol since March, with staff at the main office, at our BCP site and working from home. We have been dealing with extremely high volumes in phone calls, emails, trading and new accounts due to the market volatility surrounding the impact of the pandemic. To put the volumes into perspective, March 2020 was HSBC InvestDirect’s highest trading month on record, followed by April 2020, which was the highest new account month in our history. In April 2020, HSBC InvestDirect introduced a special pricing promotion of $0 for online North American equity and ETF trades for Active Traders (150+ trades per rolling threemonth period). The Active Trader rate of $0 is
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valid until December 31, 2020. Effective January 1, 2021, the Active Trader rate of $4.88 for online North American equity and ETF trades will apply. This program has been an unbelievable success and exceeded our expectations. (Terms and conditions apply.) In addition to the Active Trader special pricing promotion, we also launched a Free Trading promotion for new accounts that ran from July until the end of October 2020. The offer entitled all new accounts (new or existing clients) to 60 calendar days of free North American online equity and ETF trading (up to a maximum of 60 trades) through the new account. So far in 2020, we have been focused on system enhancements and resiliency to minimize any potential system downtime and to improve the overall customer experience. With the high level of market volatility that we saw during the beginning of the pandemic, we optimized several popular pages on the trading site by including quick order entry and execution from all pages, in addition to improving the performance of our market data database and adding extra capacity to effectively handle increases in site usage and volumes. We also launched the electronic delivery of tax forms, introduced several client forms with e-signature capabilities and made improvements in our onboarding process to make things easier for our customers to get things done. The high level of market volatility and unprecedented volumes experienced were motivating factors for the system enhancements performed in 2020, along with our commitment to providing a stable and highly effective trading platform. Although several of our enhancements were behind the scenes, client feedback has been very positive with regards to our enhancements and modifications. HSBC InvestDirect has a great deal to be proud of this year. We are extremely proud of the way our team rallied around each other and our customers to support them when dealing with the numerous challenges that they encountered as a result of COVID-19.