Room for one more

Though volumes in the stock market have taken a dip recently, it hasn’t deterred new online stock brokers from offering attractive brokerage packages to attract new customers.

A recent entrant into the stock brokering business, Canmoney.in, a division of Canara Bank, has kick-started operations with brokerage rates better than the industry. The portal charges 0.35 per cent for delivery-based trades, compared to the industry average of 0.40 per cent.

But if you are a bigger investor with a higher monthly turnover, the portal offers special brokerage packages depending on the volume of business. The packages charge a monthly minimum brokerage fee (see Low-cost Brokerage). On a turnover of more than Rs 20 lakh, the portal charges a brokerage of 0.20 per cent; this drops to 0.16 per cent for turnovers of more than Rs 1 crore.

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Canara Bank is one of the three PSUs—State Bank of India and Indian Bank are the other two—to have launched an online trading facility which is open to all new and existing customers.

Old customers, however, have to ensure that they are on the core banking platform to allow a seamless exchange between its savings bank, brokerage and demat accounts.

The portal offers a portfolio tracker, research reports, a data bank of companies and the facility to view online digital contract notes.

Whether Canmoney.in can make its mark in the competitive broking space remains to be seen, but the management is optimistic. Says T. Sreekanthan, MD, Gilt Securities Trading Corporation, the Canara Bank subsidiary that owns Canmoney.in: “We offer the state-ofthe-art facilities and competitive brokerage rates. We will also capitalise on the PSU status, which stands for security and safety.”

— Clifford Alvares