Chinese Fintech firm Ant Financial Services (part of Alibaba (NYSE:BABA)) and US asset management company, The Vanguard Group, have launched a joint initiative that offers retail investment advisory and consulting services to investors in China, the companies revealed on December 13.
The announcement has come over six months after the joint venture plans were found in an online national registry. Investors will reportedly receive customized services that will be based on their individual risk preferences, time horizons and investment goals.
The service will take minimum investments of 800 yuan (appr. $114), and is available via Ant Financial’s Alipay app.
Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Chinese digital commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, currently manages Yu’ebao, the world’s leading financial market fund.
The firm, established as a third-party payment platform, reportedly held 1.13 trillion yuan (appr. $163 billion) in total assets as of the end of last year.
Vanguard has over $5 trillion in assets under management. In May 2017, the investment giant launched a wholly foreign-owned enterprise (WFOE) in China.
In October 2019, The Vanguard Group, a licensed investment advisor based in Malvern, Pennsylvania, partnered with Symbiont, a crypto startup funded by Nasdaq Ventures.
The partnership between Vanguard and Symbiont involves creating a trading platform for the $6 trillion global currency market.
Vanguard said that the trading platform would aim to reduce transaction costs for the trillions of dollars traded each year by enabling peer-to-peer (P2P) trading for investors, which would allow them to transact directly via distributed ledger technology.
Symbiont CEO Mark Smith noted that the firm partnered with Vanguard to develop the currency platform.
The trading platform was introduced earlier this year and performed its first trades during the time.
