Before being shut down, VNDIRECT was honored for its outstanding technology.

Serious incident in the history of Vietnam's stock market

VNDIRECT is one of the first securities companies to apply online customer identification technology (eKYC), allowing customers to open securities accounts through electronic transactions and authenticate accounts online anytime, anywhere...

However, on March 24, 2024, the entire system of this brokerage company with the third largest market share was attacked, marking a serious incident in the history of Vietnam's securities market. The scale of this incident far exceeded the VPS incident in July 2020 (about a few hours) or other incidents.

Accordingly, after 4 days, VNDIRECT still could not fix the system, causing many investors to be confused and frustrated because they missed the market fluctuations. Ms. Phuong Thao (Long Bien, Hanoi) reflected: "I bought NVL shares but could not sell them because I could not access the app even though the stock price had increased by 12%. Every day I was anxious because I was afraid that the stock would hit a short-term peak and then turn around and fall."

The impact on investor sentiment was evident when VND shares saw a sudden spike in trading volume in the first two trading sessions of the week, dropping a total of 3.53% to VND23,450/share. Trading volume exceeded 80 million units/session, double the average of the last 10 sessions. Foreign investors also increased pressure when net selling a total of VND484 billion.

VNDIRECT Securities Company was attacked by a foreign organization since March 24, 2024. Photo: Van Thang

A brokerage director at a securities company assessed that as the market size grows, security becomes more and more important for securities companies in the market. The Securities Commission as well as member exchanges will tighten this issue in the near future. AI, admin systems and security of securities companies need to be upgraded from now on to avoid the second VNDIRECT story.

It is worth mentioning that this is not the first time VNDIRECT has encountered a technology problem. In April 2022, investors could not access VNDIRECT's website and price list on both computers and mobile devices due to the reason "The domain name has expired".

Top in investment in software development

As the third largest securities company in market share and the place where 7.01% of transactions on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange were conducted in 2023, VNDIRECT has spent a lot of money on software development. According to the financial report for the fourth quarter of 2023, the company spent 164 billion VND on this purpose, an increase of 33% compared to the beginning of the year. After deducting accumulated depreciation of 111 billion VND, the remaining value is more than 53 billion VND. Since 2008, VNDIRECT has invested in its own technology platform, self-developed the Core system, creating the premise for shifting from a securities trading service business model to a diversified financial investment service platform.

Compared to other securities companies in the market, VNDIRECT is only behind VPS and SSI in terms of software investment. These are also the two names leading VNDIRECT in terms of brokerage market share.

VNDIRECT Securities was also honored as “Vietnam’s Most Outstanding Company in the Financial Services Sector in 2022” by AsiaMoney, an Asian magazine in the fields of economics - finance - banking. The award “Securities Company with Outstanding Information Technology Application”, “Securities Company with Most Satisfied Customers” organized by IDG in 2020. The award “Prestigious Securities Brand” in 2010…

Source