Vanguard, Ant Financial Start Providing Investment Advice in China
27 March 2020 - 6:13PM
Dow Jones News
By Stella Yifan Xie
A robo-advisory joint venture between Vanguard Group and Jack
Ma's Ant Financial Services Group has started providing mutual-fund
recommendations to users of the latter's popular Alipay mobile
platform, kicking off the U.S. investing giant's first major foray
in China.
On Thursday, some users of Alipay were given access to a new
service called Help You Invest that carried the brand names of Ant
and Vanguard. Individuals with at least 800 yuan ($113) will be
guided to assemble tailored investment portfolios by selecting from
a pool of around 6,000 mutual funds overseen by more than 100
domestic asset managers.
An Ant spokesman said the service will be offered to all of
Alipay's 900 million users in China on April 2. Investors who use
the service will be charged a small daily fee of about CNY0.14 for
every CNY100 they invest. That amounts to an annualized fee of
0.5%, which the Ant spokesman said was "in line with industry
practices."
Vanguard, America's second-largest asset manager after BlackRock
Inc., launched its domestic Chinese business in May 2017 when it
opened a Shanghai office. The index-fund pioneer previously said
its goal was to bring low-cost investing to China's masses. It
isn't allowed to sell its own products in the country yet.
Vanguard's joint venture with Ant was formed last year, with
Vanguard owning 49% and Ant holding a 51% stake.
The investment-advisory venture is going live after a tumultuous
period for global financial markets, which have been pressured by
the widening coronavirus pandemic. China's Shanghai Composite Index
is down 8.6% year to date, though it has performed better than many
global peers.
Write to Singapore Editors at singaporeeditors@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 27, 2020 02:58 ET (06:58 GMT)
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