SET unveils 2023-2025 strategic plan, bolstering the Thai capital market with new economy companies and bridging today & tomorrow investments
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) unveils a three-year strategic plan (2023-2025) that steers towards mutual growth for businesses, industries, the capital market, society and the country for the greater opportunity for all (Growth for Business, Industry, Society).
The plan focuses on developing a central platform, bridging the ecosystems of today’s and tomorrow’s investments, and making fundraising and investment simple for entrepreneurs and investors.
SET will also address diverse preferences covering from being the fund-raising destination for businesses of all sizes, enticing companies in the new economy for listing, accommodating the fund-raising via digital tokens, launching small-ticket investment products to exploring to introduce environment-linked products. Aside, SET and its partners will pursue internal and external sustainability for Thailand’s balanced and sustainable growth.
SET President Pakorn Peetathawatchai revealed that in the three years (2023-2025), amid the rapid changes in technology, consumer behavior, volatility of capital flows, uncertainties in economic recovery in light of high inflation and geopolitical risks, SET places importance on boosting the Thai capital market’s competitiveness and concurrently promoting sustainability in environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects, for the benefits to all parties under the vision of “To Make the Capital Market ‘Work’ for Everyone”. This will be achieved through four strategies.
Strategy 1: Make fundraising & investment simple
Enhance fund-raising opportunity: Making it easier for businesses of every size in tapping funds from the stock market. Particular supports will be provided to new economy companies from the filing stage along with preparations for potential businesses. SMEs and startups are in the focal point for an access to funding, on top of LiVE Academy and LiVE Platform as Thai Digital Assets Exchange (TDX) will be developed as a trading platform for investment and utility tokens, scheduled to be operational in the third quarter of 2023.
Enhance investment opportunities: Raising a variety of small-ticket products for small investors, studying environment-linked investment products and trading hour extension for greater convenience, enhancing efficiency in account opening to provide opportunities to access the capital market easier and more convenient while upgrading Settrade platform to be “Capital Market Super App” to efficiently connect investment opportunities in a diverse range of asset classes.
Strategy 2: Move industry & ecosystem with standard
Developing a new trading platform within the first quarter of 2023 to raise efficiency of investment ecosystem and accommodate the development of new products, strengthening cybersecurity in collaboration with other players in the industry and amending related trading regulations to be in line with the changing market condition and the new trading system.
Strategy 3: Match partners for synergy
Improving information disclosure via SMART Marketplace with analytical data and functions, materializing thematic and issue-based researches for further capital market development, putting listed companies’ ESG data on ESG Data Platform that will start distributing data in the second quarter of 2023 and devising ESG Ratings to support of launch of ESG-linked products.
Strategy 4: Merge ESG with substance
Deploying ESG in driving internal operations and collaborative efforts with external partners towards sustainable growth.
E (Environmental) dimension: Grooming ESG workforce for the capital market and educational institutions, establishing ESG Champion on environmental stewardship via ESG Academy, and creating Climate Care Platform that includes an environmental management function and linkup with partners. Moreover, SET aims to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions, with the Cloud-based emission reduction infrastructure and energy efficiency enhancement of the green data center.
S (Social) dimension: Promoting financial literacy among the retirees and low-income groups, measuring Thai people’s financial literacy for the design of right contents and communications channels, enhancing the capabilities of entrepreneurs and particularly family businesses via LiVE Platform, advocating social enterprises (SEs), promoting entrepreneurship in collaboration with universities and vocational institutions, and preparing SET human resources as well as improving their skillsets continuously to drive the capital market forward.
G (Governance) dimension: Accelerating the amendments on supervisory and trading regulations to be appropriate and fit well with the current situation, devising efficient supervisory tools for new products and cooperating with government sector and regulatory bodies as well as other organizations on long-term capital market development. Internally, SET is prepared to strengthen organizational risk management with the deployment of technology and analytical data in constantly improving work processes.
SET expects these four strategies to help create more opportunities to stakeholders in expanding fund-raising and investment opportunities for businesses and investors, upgrade infrastructure that will accommodate the capital market’s growth, and safeguard society and the environment to achieve a balanced and sustainable growth for businesses, the capital market, the economy, society and the country.
Significant milestones and achievements in 2022
Opportunities for all
- IPOs’ offering size amounted to THB 127.84 billion (approx. USD 3.46 billion), the highest in ASEAN and the fourth in Asia. Nine companies were in the new economy, increasing the market’s diversity and attractiveness.
- SET had the highest liquidity among ASEAN exchanges, the position it has been holding since 2012, with average daily trading value of THB 76.77 billion.
- TFEX saw average 565,627 contracts traded daily (The second ranking in ASEAN according to an unofficial data as of November 2022).
- Two DRx products were issued to give investors, particularly small-time ones, a returngenerating opportunity and to promote the diversification of investment overseas: “AAPL80X” with Apple Inc as underlying assets and “TSLA80X” with Tesla Inc as underlying assets. Both companies are listed on Nasdaq, the United States.
- LiVE Exchange (LiVEx) welcomed three new listings: Advance Web Service pcl (AWS22), Sitron Power pcl (SITRON22) and Storage Asia pcl (ISTORE22).
- SET launched guidelines on process and operating mechanism improvement for securities trading. The adjustments included known your customers, customer data center development, securities listing, trading regulations, and data check to enhance efficiency for all stakeholders.
Development of entrusted infrastructure innovations
- TDX was granted a business license and its system is ready for operation. At present, TDX joins hands with three ICO portal service providers.
- FundConnext saw the average 31,400 daily transactions of mutual funds, and an increase of 11 service users (to 78 selling agents and asset management companies, representing 73 percent of the mutual fund industry).
- FinNet’s payment transactions accounted for 25 percent of the capital market and continuously extended its services comprising Interbank, Intrabank, QR Code and Direct Debit Registration (DDR) to other investment products in the capital market to cover transactions of mutual funds and derivatives.
- e-Meeting was developed as an end-to-end meeting solution for the new normal. In 2022, 80 listed companies used the service.
- SMART Marketplace included ESG data and listed companies’ data in its data feed API channel for over 50 companies and continued its service expansion.
- ESG Data Platform was launched as ESG database, to demonstrate listed companies’ sustainability to investors and the society at large.
Sustainability Promotion
- Improve Thais’ financial literacy through media under “Happy Money – Know how to overcome debts” campaign with 4.5 million views as 180,632 entrepreneurs participated in LiVE Platform.
- Promote social enterprises with 62 business co-creation deals with listed companies and social enterprises.
- 26 listed companies included in DJSI Index by S&P Global, the highest in ASEAN for nine consecutive years.
- More than 400 listed companies taking part in Climate Care Collaboration as a collective effort in combating the global warming, while “Care the Bear” Project being adopted at Thailand-hosted APEC 2022 and SET Building achieving the carbon neutrality goal.
