Polish FX brokerage, XTB plans to expand its brokerage business in Asia to meet its growth targets for 2021, or possibly to offset the impact of sluggish economic conditions and regulatory restrictions in its core markets.
"We assume that by the end of the year we will be able to parameterize the Asian market, so that we can start operating on it at the beginning of 2021," said Omar Arnaout, CEO at X-Trade Brokers DM SA.
Speaking before a conference for investors in Poland, Arnaout refused to disclose a specific country name as they operate in a competitive environment, and therefore does not want to reveal further details to competitors.
According to Polish news agency InfoStrefa, the publicly-listed broker wants to onboard an average of 30,000 new customers in each quarter next year, which is up from 21,178 clients it acquired in the third quarter of 2020. The average number of active clients on the platform in Q3 remained 55,760 the highest in the brokerage’s history.
XTB Shop in South Africa Faces Obstacles
"Our goal is, regardless of whether the market Volatility is greater or less, to approach the level of the second quarter of 2020 with each subsequent quarter, when we opened over 30,000 new accounts. There is no reason why the number of new customers from the second quarter was not repeated both in the fourth quarter of 2020 and in the future," said Arnaout.
XTB experienced a flood of new investors who saw the market chaos as an investment opportunity. Coupled with this advance, XTB has registered a record number of active accounts with 52,084 as of H1 of 2020, growing steadily from 23,688 in H1 of 2019 or more than double than it was a year ago. Additionally, new accounts were on the uptick, swelling more than three times year-over-year to 52,434 in H1 of 2020, relative to just 16,089 accounts in H1 of 2019.
Reflecting on XTB expansion into other regions, Arnaout said the company makes further inroads into Africa and beyond. However, the company’s subsidiary in South Africa, which has been in the licensing process for two years, has not obtained the FSCA approval to date.
"This is due to the complexity of local laws and regulatory changes that have occurred recently," said Arnaout.
