Japan’s largest online brokerages are increasing their share of the investment trust market, edging out banks and traditional brokers that have focused on face-to-face sales for decades.
The popularity of a comprehensive tax-free investment account program called NISA has encouraged its users — most of whom are in their 40s or younger, according to a report — to close deals via their smartphones and laptops.
That helped push online brokerages’ share of the publicly offered mutual fund market above 20% for the first time at the end of June, up from about 16% a year earlier, according to estimates from the Nomura Research Institute (NRI).
