Bangkok, 21 February 2019 ? The SEC has announced key achievements of the past year highlighting establishment of sustainable market foundation, regulatory reform in line with the changing global landscape, and endorsement of international standards. The SEC has also laid out the strategic plan for the next three years (2019-2021) focusing on the optimum use of technologies to enhance market efficiency and facilitate fundraising and investment activities in order to create long term well-being for Thais.

SEC Secretary-General Rapee Sucharitakul said: ?We have achieved the intended outcome for 2018, for example, the launch of Wealth Advice for All initiative which gives the public a more convenient access to one-stop services on investment advice and the co-launch of the Happy PVD Company project with the industry alliance to promote sufficient savings for post-retirement well-being. Another key achievement was the enactment of the law and regulations governing digital asset businesses to set up minimum requirements for business operators and protect investors.

?The SEC has also cooperated with the Bank of Thailand and the Office of Insurance Commission to build a supervisory linkage that ensures stability and prevents systemic risk to promote sustainable financial market growth, and worked closely with the Stock Exchange of Thailand to reduce redundancy and facilitate the business sector.?

SEC has improved supervisory standards in many areas, including debts offerings, communicating expectations for securities business intermediaries to provide standard services for clients? best interest (putting investors first). This has led to a better process of product offering and the introduction of machine readable and Open API data presentation to accommodate further data analysis and value added services. In addition, the open architecture business platform has been promoted to facilitate selection of financial product choices that best serves investors? demands.

In 2018, the SEC entered the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP), which resulted in further regulatory improvement and international standard compliance. The official assessment results, which would enhance the confidence of domestic and foreign investors, are expected in mid-2019.

For the next three years, the SEC strategic plan will continue to focus on expanding the public access to financial planning services to create long-term financial freedom, increasing fundraising efficiency and business opportunities, enhancing competitiveness, and building market infrastructures for the digital age.

?The SEC is becoming an adaptive regulator for the future of data-driven supervision whereby responses to change will be faster and risks exposed to investors and the financial system will be managed in a more timely manner. In so doing, we change the mindset and working methods, emphasizing analysis and the mixed use of supervisory tools to achieve the intended outcome without relying solely on regulations,? added Mr. Rapee.

The SEC strategic plan has engaged market stakeholders into the planning process. It is also in line with the 20-year National Strategy, covering five key areas as follows:

(1) Democratized access to wealth advice: Promote providers of investment advice and financial planning services to be of high quality and conveniently accessible for the public. This is to allow better access to investment services and lower costs for investment advice providers;

(2) Funding opportunities for growth and sustainability: Create opportunities for efficient fundraising while promoting the capital market's sustainable growth and its role as a fundraising venue for good corporate governance businesses and value-added innovations for the economy and society, as well as enhance national competitiveness and provide funding opportunities for neighboring economies;

(3) Digitalization of the capital market: Improve the process and capacity of the digitalized infrastructure to create better and more convenient services and increase efficiency and competitiveness of the capital market and the real sector;

(4) Future of supervision: Pave the way for supervision suitable for the future and reduce burdens on the business sector through a data-driven approach and maximize the use of technologies to increase supervisory efficiency, create framework for monitoring and managing risks related to FinTech, and reform regulations in line with the changing environment;

(5) Reform of regulations and regulators: Improve the supervisory standard and organizational management by emphasizing the importance of the new mindset, working methods and the mixed use of varieties of supervisory tools to create a balance between promoting innovations and managing risks, including the development of skills and competency of the human resources.