Scope Markets, a global online trading platform, has launched its trading operations in the country. The company looks to provide an online platform where investors can trade global shares, indices, forex, and commodities.
Under the entity, SCFM Ltd, the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) has licensed the non-dealing online foreign exchange broker. Already the company boasts to have opened over 1,000 accounts showing the country’s thirst to invest in online trading.
According to Jacob Plattner, the CEO of Scope Markets, the strategy of the company has always been to take its institutional heritage to the retail markets.
“In order to do that we had to identify some key markets to penetrate in a meaningful way. We have been looking at Africa for a number of years and we identified Kenya as a place where we could build our hub for Africa. We believe that Scope Markets will be the number one online broker in Kenya and soon thereafter Africa. This will help us achieve our ultimate goal of becoming one of the best retails and institutional broker worldwide,” he said.
One of the reasons the firm decided to venture into the Kenyan market is the educated and young workforce. Youth in the country have shown interest in online trading as they look to diversify their alternative revenue options beyond local trading at the bourse. According to Kevin Ng’ang’a, CEO of Scope Markets Kenya, the youth have a huge opportunity in online trading as it offers them an income generating avenue especially when job opportunities are scarce.
The biggest gap in the trading space is the lack of information, and we are dedicated to closing this gap through training and capacity building
“We want to lead the way in the online forex trading space as an income generating scheme and a means of job creation for the youth in the digital economy. We need to give Kenyans and Africans in general, a safe, secure and regulated platform that they can relate to and easily walk up to and carry out online forex trading. The biggest gap in the trading space is the lack of information, and we as Scope Markets are dedicated to closing this gap through training and capacity building through mentorship,” he said.
The company has also targeted to train about 50,000 novice traders in currency dealings in the next two years as part of its plans to integrate more Kenyans into the fast-growing digital economy. Kenya’s online trading space has been growing tremendously, Scope Markets is the second broker to acquire a license after Equiti Group Ltd, which acquired a license and started operating last year.
