KUWAIT -- The financial brokerage firms are looking forward to legislative reforms to enhance their role in 2010 which is expected to bring radical changes to the profession in Kuwait, local experts said on Wednesday.

The State of Kuwait, which is increasingly becoming the focus of foreign investors, has had experience enough to play a greater role in the financial investment on the Arab arena, they argued in separate statements to KUNA.

Chairman of Hermes IFA Anas Khaled Al-Saleh said the Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) tended to promote the brokerage profession with a view to providing brokers with access to expertise and building their capacity.

"The profession is seeing accelerated developments due to global economic challenges which require constant improvement of the technical expertise of brokers and more helpful atmospheres," Al-Saleh pointed out.

"The local brokers need greater powers to play their role in reviving the KSE transactions," he said, noting that their role is currently confined to facilitation of stock exchanges and coordination of the relationship between clients and clearance firms.

"Although the brokerage firms can ensure the clearance of transactions, they need more powers to keep pace with the global developments and develop studies to improve the profession," Al-Saleh argued.

He voiced hope that the planned legislation to regulate the Kuwaiti financial market would help maximize the role of the profession and pave the way for brokers to provide better service to the KSE-listed investors.

Dealing with the role of Hermes IFA, he said the company took the lead in modernizing the profession in the light of the latest achievements of the information technology to protect the privacy of investor data.

"Hermes IFA is the first Kuwaiti firm to introduce the e-trade system vial mobile phones and the internet and provide integrated financial data on the KSE-listed stocks," he underscored.

Fahad Al-Shuraian, Deputy Director-General of Al-Ittihad Financial Brokerage Co., said the entire aspirations of local brokers for 2010 serve the interests of the country.

"The profession's aspired greater powers will help the KSE become better prepared for dealing with NASDAK especially after the two stock markets signed a deal to modernize the KSE in line with the international developments," he pointed out.

Al-Shuraian urged forming an association to group all local brokerage firms with a view to solving their problems and protect their interests.

"The operation mechanism of the local brokerage firms is confined to the stock sell-and-buy operations although their cadres are capable of development of technical financial analyses," he regretted.

On his part, Khaled Al-Qahtani, a financial analyst, argued that the brokerage profession is in need of regulation as it has entered a crucial stage of fierce competition.

"A Kuwaiti broker can present offer the sell or buy orders to the bourse which means that their role is no more than an executor. "They can neither advise investors nor produce reports on the financial portfolios, nor deal with the data of any listed company," Al-Qahtani explained.

The financial experts agreed that the brokerage profession needs more powers to maximize its role in 2010.

Source