Covid-19: More clients moving online, says Geojit

KOCHI: The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the pace of technology adoption among people who engage in stock trading, says a leading brokerage. According to Jones George, Chief Digital Officer, Geojit Financial Services (Geojit), the ratio between online and offline transactions is shifting in favour of online.
“For the clients side what we had been working on for the past five months is to provide the clients with the ability to transact safely to purely from home.This is the twentieth year since we have enabled online trading,” George said.
“Prior to the pandemic, online transactions accounted for 60% of their overall transactions and the rest was offline, mainly transactions done over telephone calls,” he said. Since the pandemic, 75% of Geojit’s clients are transacting online and George believes that it will stay like that even after the pandemic comes under control.
The firm is taking proactive steps to bring more clients online and for that they launched a WhatsApp channel recently. With the channel, clients can now engage in sock trading by chatting with the dealers. They can also invest in Mutual Funds and can track funds transfer details and other essential reports, easily using the platform.
“This is a channel through which we have activated our branch dealers to interact with the clients and to interact with the clients and collect any trade orders and provide trade confirmation,” George said.
Developed by Geojit Technologies, a subsidiary of Geojit, all communications on its WhatsApp channel are logged so that the trade confirmations through this channel have legal acceptance. The WhatsApp channel has the added advantage of safety features such as customer authenticity, traceability and self-service.
The clients can access the WhatsApp channel by sending a WhatsApp message to +91 99955 00044 from their registered mobile numbers. After successful authentication, they can access three customised services on WhatsApp – chat with dealer, self-service and statement and reports.
Through ‘Chat with Dealer’, after the verification process, a client can chat with a dealer associated with her/his branch to trade in equity and derivatives. All communications between the client and the dealer are saved in the servers, thus enabling Geojit to collect trade confirmations through WhatsApp.