Old habits die hard?

FELIPE: No, I'll explain that first. When we started to do this business, we never went into it with our eyes closed. We make mistakes, but at least I can tell you that even if we do, we know this is something that is "in the cards" for the future. So there is still a gestation period and it is easy to have more losses. But eventually it will make more money if have the stubbornness and the endurance.

The stock market right now is a bear market and almost everyone loses in such a market. But if you start with something new, you have to start with something new in a bear market. We thought that if we do not go into this line, we only have the old business. Our established brokerage business never caters to the public; it's primarily for institutional buyers. We do not entertain individual customers as a rule. But that doesn't mean that we do not want to enter this side of the business. Now, here is a medium by which we can get into that without affecting the institutional buyer sales. And there is no additional cost other than the new cost of the infrastructure that we put on our own line.

CHRISTINE: I think in addition to what Mr. Yap has said...

Mr. Yap? (Felipe Yap laughs)

CHRISTINE: (smiles) That's what I call him in the office. OK, in addition to what my dad has said, if we didn't do this off-line brokerage business, we wouldn't go into the on-line brokerage business.

We didn't have to build a new system. What we needed to do was make it full automated so that the investors, the investing public of the on-line system, would be able to use it in such a way there's no human intervention anymore. So he doesn't have to call up the accounting department to say how much do I still have there. How much is my balance there? It's already seen online. We didn't need to reinvent the wheel.

What are the safeguards you have online to ensure that the clients are credit-worthy? Payment is presumably also done on-line, right?

CHRISTINE: Payment is done at HSBC. So we have a partner there. With Php 25,000 minimum deposit, we're connected with HSBC online and once the check has cleared, they let us know. From then on, everything is automated already.