How to Withdraw Funds in COL Financial through Email a.k.a. Online Withdrawal in Three (3) Easy Steps

I've been getting a lot of emails/questions recently on how to easily withdraw funds in COL Financial through email so you do not have to personally go tho their office in Tektite Towers, Ortigas everytime you want to withdraw some of your funds in COL.

So here's how to withdraw your funds with COL Financial in three (3) easy steps:

1. Make sure you have the cash in your portfolio to withdraw. According COL:

An individual can withdraw the proceeds of a stock transaction sale in three days (T+3) after a stock is sold subject to the procedures on the withdrawal of funds. An unused cash balance longer than three days dormant can be withdrawn anytime thereafter, allowing for one day notice with a cut-off time of 12 Noon to prepare the check payment for that day.


2. Download, fill-up and sign the Fund Withdrawal Form, indicate that you want the funds deposited to your registered bank account - this is the bank account you've nominated when you applied for your COL account.

Log-in to your COL account and go to Home > Forms > WithdrawalFund.pdf

Sample of filled up and signed Fund Withdrawal Form

Stock Broker Comparison: COL Financial vs BPI Trade

I encountered a detailed comparison between  BPI Trade and COL Financial by G. M. Domingo and thought it was pretty detailed hence It would be useful to guide the Filipino Investors out there in making their decision on choosing their first online Stock Broker.

Enjoy his comparison between the two from his personal experience. Cheers!

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I have accounts on both BPI Trade and COL Financial. Sadly, as much as I like the bank, BPI Trade has caused me lots of headaches, whereas COL is better in almost all criteria. I sincerely hope BPI does some bold moves to fix their processes.

Here are their comparisons based from my personal experiences:

BPI Trade

• Application: So hard and so complicated (this is the most tiring part, believe me -- you apply online, print, bring the form personally to any branch, wait for weeks for their email to arrive, then the email arrives but everything is confusing and you still won't be able to open your account, then finally you call their hotline to ask for the initial password. And as additional surprise, you still have to enrol your BPI Trade Account Number to your BPI Express Online so you can do fund transfer. To do this, you have to again enrol online, print, bring form to the bank then wait for days again until you see it in your Express Online account. Note that all of these take about 3-5 weeks to finish.

The Three (3) Phases of Investing According to Mr. Edward Lee

When Mr. Edward Lee, the Founder and Chairman of the Board of COL Financial Group Inc speaks I always listen. I have very high regards for the man because he is a self-made billionaire from humble beginnings coming from a family of elementary school teachers.

I guess we could say that Mr. Lee is one of the guys who's gotten very rich by investing in the Philippine stock market even by starting out small without any background and knowledge in the industry (*coughs* I can relate except for he "very rich" part - yet hehe!"). So for the Filipino Investors out there who is investing in stocks, specially to those guys who are just starting to invest in stocks, I believe learning from the the guy who's actually made it would yield valuable leanings and insights.

He discusses about the 3 phases or  key questions every investor should know when it comes to investing:

1. Does it work?

2. How does it work?

3. Why can't I make it work?

COL Mid-Year Market Briefing - The Tides of Opportunity

Got this invitation from COL. If you're a client and you're free on the said dates, make sure you don't miss this event. =)

Registration is strictly on a first-come, first-served basis and will automatically close once maximum capacity has been reached. Reserve your seat today. Please do not forget to print out your e-ticket as this will be presented at the registration table on the day of the event.

Click here to register now.

See you there!

Investment Thesis: A Call on COL

I've been looking at COL for some time now and as you might already know, COL Financial Group Inc, the leading online stockbroker in the Philippines is actually listed in the PSE. I personally trade with them and I like their trading platform. Having this said, I really had the interest on investing on this company not only because I like it's service and products but also because of the type of business it is in. Since COL is a stock broker, they make money from brokerage commissions. Every time you and I buy or sell stocks they make money.

I have been closely monitoring how much money they make on a daily basis from their online brokerage operations since Nov last year to present, and when I saw this news below it really came to me that COL is really on a very sweet spot in it's brokerage business and it's position in the Equity capital markets in the Philippines.

Security Name	COL Financial Group, Inc.
Date	03/05/2013
Headline	DCL #1976: Press release: "COL's operating performance rebounds..." - 1
Source
Content
Operating profits of leading online stockbroker COL Financial Group Inc. (COL) rebounded during the fourth quarter of 2012. During the last three months of 2012, COL's operating profits jumped by 16.1% to Php50.1 Mil. This brought operating income for the whole of 2012 to Php339.2 Mil. Although still lower by 15.6% compared to the 2011 total of Php401.7 Mil, the drop was much slower than the 19.4% decline registered during the first nine months of the year. Consolidated net income for the full year fell 8.6% to Php305.9 Mil. Profits rebounded as COL benefited from the recovery of trading activity by local investors in the PSE.

The key takeaway of the above news is that COL's operating profit rebounded in the 4th quarter last year. Noting this, when I checked my gathered data since Nov 5, 2012 to Dec 31, 2012 (2/3rds of the 4th quarter) the average commission they get is about PHP 1.6MM per day (I computed the daily commission by multiplying the daily value turnover under COL x 0.25%). As per the article, this was achieved mainly on the increase in trading activity in the 4th quarter accompanied by COL's increase in number of clients amounting to about 46,536 as of end 2012 from only 27,704 last 2011.

My 2nd Online Stock Broker - BPI Trade

It was about 3 years ago when I opened my first online trading account with COL Financial, they were referred to as CitisecOnline then, but it's been quite a while that I've been contemplating on signing up for a 2nd broker because I want to have a 2nd account to track the performance for my different portfolio constructed using a different strategy other than my personal calls. Hence the idea of opening an account either with FirstmetroSec or BPI Trade.

But it was EkkayTrader who convinced me to just go with BPI Trade as a 2nd online broker since as she pointed out, there was a major improvement on BPI Trade's trading platform, not to mention it was pretty easy to open an account with them. So yeah, thanks to E! haha

COL and BPI Trade

Though BPI Trade has improved, I personally think that COL is the superior broker in terms of functionality, ease of use, research and built in functions. For the COL account owners I think the extra value you get with opening a 2nd trading account with BPI Trade are as follows: