We talk to Tiger Brokers in Singapore about the global firm's TradingFront platform, its wealth management strategy, use of AI and where it thinks the sector is heading.

A big win for advisors using AI is that they can spend far more time out meeting new and existing clients. They can forge the human connections that tech can’t match, an Asia-based brokerage that has pushed into wealth management says.

In all the use cases banks, wealth managers and other financial services institutions consider a major “win” factor is removing drudgery from a job and saving hours of time so that people can focus on “higher value-add” activities. 

“Advisors need to spend more time with clients and less on administrative processes which can be very time-consuming,” Xu Yang (main picture), global partner, Tiger Brokers, told WealthBriefingAsia in a recent interview. Xu, whose team is based in Singapore, spoke about how the firm’s TradingFront digital wealth management platform has grown and what its strategy is for the next few years. 

TradingFront empowers advisors to manage clients’ investments. Users include external asset managers and, potentially, family offices are in the frame, Xu said. A big part of what TradingFront amounts to is a turnkey asset management platform or TAMP – a commonly used model in the US. With more than 10 million global people using Tiger Brokers and client assets over $52 billion, the firm’s front end can be easily employed by advisors as well as end clients, Xu said. 

The platform provides automated diagnostics on the end-client's portfolio performance, risk exposure, and asset allocation; it can spot opportunities to enhance yields, gives reports and talking points that clients can quickly obtain, and it provides real-time metrics including volatility, drawdown of investment and Sharpe ratios. (The ratio is the difference between the returns of the investment and the risk-free return, divided by the standard deviation of the investment returns.)

In 2024, there was a 176 per cent rise in end clients coming on board; the number of advisors using the platform rose 52 per cent and total assets being custodied doubled from their 2023 level. 

Tiger Brokers, founded in 2014 and listed on the Nasdaq in the US, already offers access to debt, listed equities, futures, options, unit trusts, money market funds and structured notes. (See a story here about recent product offerings from Tiger Brokers.) On 27 August, the parent group UP Fintech Holdings reported total revenue of a record high of US$138.7 million, a 13.1 per cent quarter-over-quarter rise, and up by 58.7 per cent on a year earlier.

Traditionally, Xu said, private banks dominated the structured notes market. (TradingFront was launched in September 2022 by Tiger Brokers (Singapore)). 

In the structured notes realm, there’s a sort of vacant market space, HNW customers between S$1 million ($779,000) and S$3 million are underserved, which private banks and other institutions aren’t filling while financial advisors are trying to. TradingFront offers structured notes across more than 10 issuers, with some requiring less than S$200,000 minimum denomination per note. This allows advisors to quickly identify the best prices for their clients, as quotations across issuers can be generated in a matter of minutes, Xu said.

Onboarding speed 
WBA asked Xu about complaints it has heard from the Singapore EAM and related sectors that it takes weeks, even months, to onboard clients – even those whose circumstances and sources of wealth aren’t especially hard to fathom. 

Xu responded by saying that, “We typically have a pretty well-structured account opening process. EAMs are pretty happy with our account opening speed and process.” TradingFront is subjected to the same industry-standard regulatory requirements, such as for anti-money laundering and know-your-client requirements, which other financial institutions also face. Tiger Brokers is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. “In 99 per cent of times, we should be able to onboard an end client within a day,” he said. 

Acceleration 
TradingFront was first launched in 2017.  And then, more than two years later, the pandemic happened and created a “tipping point” for a tech-driven platform such as this, said Xu.

“Suddenly, you could not meet your clients,” he said. “Covid accelerated platform adoption and enhancements,” he said. 

In 2022, as the team chatted with clients and the wider sector, Tiger Brokers decided to make TradingFront available in Singapore. 

“We found a demand for a fintech advisory platform in Singapore, where the financial advisory industry is growing rapidly,” Xu said. “We seek to empower more wealth managers and advisors with cutting-edge tools through TradingFront, as the key enabler for them to serve their end clients better.”

As markets continue to be volatile at times, advisors, freed up from labour-intensive chores by AI, can use modern tech to flag potential pain points for clients, spend more time speaking to clients in person and keep them composed, he added. 

(We interviewed the firm in 2023 about its use of AI, for example with investor "assistant" functions.)