Commsec - 1 million clients

Thirteen years ago, CommSec — or Commonwealth Securities to give it its full name — was a dream in the minds of a clutch of the bank's executives. What would have been the odds of the lumbering Commonwealth Bank launching a stockbroking business that, little more than a decade later, would book more trades on the stock exchange than anyone else?

But a bunch of bankers, used to the bureaucratic ways of the Commonwealth, slipped under the guard of the stockbroking establishment and built a business that now boasts close to 1.5 million accounts, or about a million customers. Its clients have either deserted high-charging established firms or they're new investors who feel comfortable doing their own transactions at a fraction of the rates charged by the big broking firms.

CommSec general manager Matthew Comyn says his full-service broking rivals "tend to look after their most valuable clients but if you're not getting much service and you're paying $100 a trade, and research is more or less freely available from a lot of different sources, then paying $19.95 a trade with us is a fairly easy decision for a lot of people."

Source The Age - Christopher Webb

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