SEC Secretary-General Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol said in the seminar “Prepare Thai Capital Market towards KYC in the Digital Age”, which SEC had held on 22 May 2019, that although technology had become an important factor for stocks and mutual funds investment in recent times, but opening a trading account, which is the first step towards the services in the capital market, still takes a long time because most of the license entities still use the same method taking about 5 to 7 days until the clients could start their investment, this results in a burden for the accessibility to the capital market.

SEC has initiated a plan to push new channels towards an easier accessibility for investors to the capital market, and to be able to swiftly change the type of services or called “the ease of switching.” These would create more numbers of investors and become the tool for wealth accumulating for retirement. 

“To achieve our goals, there are three necessities: the infrastructure which connect all stakeholders, regulations regarding the data exchanging, and the most important is dataset that would be exchanged under said infrastructure.” SEC Secretary-General Ruenvadee said.

SEC Intermediaries Policy Department Director, Archinee Pattamasukhon said that the plan of the SEC to push for the “ease of switching” in the capital market can be categorized into three phases, including:

(1)   Elevating the e-KYC standard, which SEC would issue a guideline for the licensed entity to introduce the technology in getting to know the clients, to strengthen the assurance on their Know Your Client (KYC) process.

(2)   Encouraging the use of the NDID platform for the elimination of redundancy in identity proofing process. The platform is trustworthy regulated under the laws, decreases the burden of costs in development and maintenance of the licensed entity’s  own platform.

(3)   Encouraging on drafting data exchange regulations between licensed entities, as well as developing the system supporting the protection of investor personal data, to ease the burden of cost of the investors to repeatedly provide such data when switching their services.

Mr. Boonsun Prasitsumrit, Chief Executive Officer of the National Digital ID Co., Ltd. (NDID), which is a joint investment of the financial and capital market participants, said that the NDID platform is one of the important infrastructures that would facilitate the identity proofing and authentication process, which is the first step towards easy and quick but with trustworthiness financial transactions. For the capital market, the NDID platform would eliminate the repetitiveness of identity proofing and authentication process if investors had already been identified and authenticated with the member of the platform, they could open new a accounts faster without the need of a repeated identity proofing process.

Mr. Kitti Sutthiatthasil, SET Executive Vice President, Finnet Innovation Network Co., Ltd. And Head of Office of President and Managing Director, said that the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is intend to develop the “Digital Gateway” to complete the digital capital market covering from opening new accounts, providing sales of mutual funds, payments, and duties payment on appointing the agent. Furthermore, the Finnet also helps licensed entity  decrease their own costs of investment, development, and system maintenance, by using the connection to the NDID system via Finnet’s Digital Gateway, which is convenient, safe, and highly proficient.

Mr. Sitdhinai Chantranon, Director of the Executive Vice President, Legal Management and General Administration of the Thai Airways International Public Company Limited, said that the Personal Data Protection Act, which is soon to be enforced, mandates duties to the controllers and processors of personal data must follow necessary processes, such as, notification of objectives on collecting, processing or disclosing the personal data, requesting of consents, protection of data, and explicit notification of the rights of the data subject, including the right to access and obtain a copy of personal data, the right to data portability, and the right to eliminate or suspend the use of their data. Controllers  and processors of such data must then have the appropriate personnel and working system for the aforementioned rights as stipulated by the laws to avoid punishment.”