With the continuous deepening of the opening up of the capital market to the outside world, the pace of Chinese securities firms' "going global" will significantly accelerate by 2025. According to statistics, at least 11 listed securities firms issued announcements of capital increase or establishment of international subsidiaries throughout the year, with the total amount of capital increase reaching a new high in recent years. From the traditional bridgehead of Hong Kong to emerging markets in Southeast Asia, from conventional capital increases and share expansions to strategic mergers and acquisitions, Chinese securities firms are integrating into the global financial market with a new attitude.

Behind the wave of capital increase is the tangible manifestation of the potential of overseas markets. In the first three quarters of 2025, the net profits of Futu Holdings and Tiger Securities increased by 123% and 280% year-on-year, respectively. According to DianDian data monitoring, the total monthly active users of Futu NiuNiu&Moomoo APP under Futu were 2.183 million throughout the year, a year-on-year increase of 48.5%. These data confirm the huge market space for Chinese securities firms to serve global Chinese and local investors, and also provide a reference growth model for traditional securities firms to expand overseas.

In the overseas layout, Southeast Asia is becoming a key focus, and Indonesia, as the largest economy in ASEAN, has particularly prominent strategic value.

Foreign investment entering the market: Guotai Haitong Securities and international capital have settled one after another

On the evening of November 17, 2025, Guotai Haitong Securities announced that the company's board of directors had unanimously approved the "Proposal on the Acquisition of Indonesian Securities Company by Overseas Subsidiaries of the Company", agreeing to allow its overseas subsidiary to acquire equity in a local Indonesian securities company. This is a further expansion of the brokerage's business into the emerging market of Indonesia, following its layout in Singapore in 2015 and acquisition of Vietnamese investment securities in 2019, and the initial establishment of a "Singapore Vietnam Indonesia" triangular financial service hub. The landing of this Indonesian acquisition is a substantial advancement of its internationalization strategy.

Guotai Haitong Securities is not an isolated case - during the same period, capital from the United States, Japan, South Korea, and even Europe also focused on this, jointly outlining the unique vision of the "global convergence" of the Indonesian securities market in 2025.

Why Indonesia? ——The intersection of short-term dividends and long-term changes

In addition to the layout of Chinese securities firms, the Indonesian securities market in 2025 will present a development situation of multiple forces intertwined and resonating from the policy side to the market side, from local institutions to global players.

DianDian Analysis believes that behind this round of "meeting" lies the historical intersection of Indonesia's unique bottom-up advantages and key variables:

Huge penetration gap: Indonesia has a 4.5% stock penetration rate, equivalent to China's level from 2010 to 2012, which is a huge gap compared to mature markets with a penetration rate of 55% -62%. In January 2026, the number of investors increased from 15 million to 21 million. As the fourth most populous country in the world and the largest economy in ASEAN, its securitization rate and the proportion of residents' financial asset allocation have considerable potential for improvement.

Policy dividend release: The "Government Regulation No. 28 of 2025" implemented in June 2025 systematically restructured the foreign investment permit path - lowering the capital threshold and introducing the "deemed approval" principle - providing a clearer and more convenient institutional framework for foreign investment entry, directly accelerating the intensive entry in the second half of the year.

Domestic capital surpasses foreign capital: In terms of transaction structure, the historical shareholding ratio of domestic capital in Indonesia exceeded 60% last year, indicating that the market structure is changing and the participation of local investors is increasing, providing a more stable customer base for securities intermediary business.

In addition to the explosive growth in the number of investors, the Indonesian capital market is also undergoing deeper institutional changes:

Institutional Upgrade: The Indonesian capital market is undergoing deeper institutional changes, and OJK plans to gradually increase the minimum public shareholding ratio of listed companies from 7.5% to 10%, which will significantly enhance market liquidity; At the same time, we will comprehensively upgrade the capital market with the three pillars of "expanding supply, expanding demand, and strengthening infrastructure", providing a more stable business environment for foreign institutions.

In the next decade, the Indonesian securities market may usher in a golden period of development from "early" to "large-scale".

Blue Ocean Undercurrent: Fluctuations and Uncertainty in the Indonesian Market from the TOP20 Rankings

According to DianDian 2025 TOP20 list of Indonesia's securities service application market, the securities retail market in the region is extremely undeveloped and volatile.

Among the top three in the industry, Stockbit, with its dual identity as a social investment community and licensed securities firm, ranks first with an average monthly activity of 1.921 million (reaching over 3 million at the end of 2015) and a cumulative download volume of 2.494 million, representing year-on-year growth of 31.5% and 119.1% respectively; IPOT ranks second with an average monthly activity of 915000 and a download volume of 1.795 million, both maintaining double-digit growth. And Ajaib, which ranked third, had strong cumulative download growth that year, with a negative growth of 17.2% in monthly activity.

Based on continuous data from the past year, Stockbit, IPOT, and Ajaib have been accumulating online users since the second half of 2025, with unstable growth. Among them, the former retail giant IPOT has taken the lead in increasing traffic, but when facing competition from top fintech securities firms, Stockbit, and Ajaib's new generation products, the increase in new traffic has significantly declined.

It is worth noting that the veteran brokerage Maybank Trade ID has shown impressive performance in recent times. As of December 2025, its daily activity has climbed to 70000 and monthly activity has reached 375000, laying a solid user foundation; After entering January 2026, there will be explosive growth, with a surge of 275% in monthly activity and 343% in downloads. With this strong momentum, Maybank Trade ID has firmly ranked fourth in the market.

Maybank Sekuritas will continue to strengthen its digital infrastructure construction and local operation investment in 2025. In order to enhance customer experience, it fully migrated the TradeConnex system to the M2E Trade platform in May and launched Maybank Trade ID 2.0 in November; At the same time, in terms of innovation in Islamic financial instruments, Maybank Sekuritas, as a custodian bank, supported the listing of Indonesia's first Islamic asset-backed security (KIK-EBA Syariah) and received good market feedback.

In contrast to Maybank's counter trend growth, new entrants are facing severe localization challenges. Robin Hood, a giant of American Internet retail securities firm, announced the acquisition of PT Buana Capital Sekuritas in December 2025, officially entering the Indonesian market. Although the target company's application "Tren" has not yet entered the top of the list, Robinhood's Indonesian layout has attracted much attention due to its "gamification" investment influence worldwide.

According to DianDian monitoring, Tren has been online for less than a year, and product iteration records show that its users are unable to complete online registration. Problems such as unstable servers and lagging interaction logic occur frequently, and user evaluations are generally low. This also explains the true logic behind Robinhood's acquisition - its target is not Tren's users or products, but the securities license held by PT Buana Capital Sekuritas. Entering the Indonesian market through "buying licenses and exchanging products" is a common path for foreign securities firms to quickly enter the market.

Whether Robinhood can replicate its global success experience to Indonesia remains to be verified; However, Guotai Haitong Securities, which has also chosen the acquisition path, may also face the challenge of integrating local business weaknesses.

DianDian data monitoring shows that mainstream securities apps in Indonesia lag behind China by 5-10 years overall. This' time difference 'has resulted in outdated and slow iteration of local old application architectures, making it difficult to carry high concurrency transactions, leaving a window for mature foreign giants to' reduce dimensionality '. Among the current approximately 95 licensed securities firms, the majority have less than 5000 mobile MAUs, resulting in extremely low market concentration. The drastic fluctuations in data such as Maybank Trade ID and the lack of services such as Tren deeply reveal the early characteristics of Indonesia's emerging market: infrastructure is not yet perfect, and any optimization of product experience or marketing investment can quickly absorb the natural traffic dividend, thereby reshaping the market share pattern.

Strategic suggestion: Breakthrough path from "license landing" to "user growth"

2025 is the year of "Dafengshou (Salad of assorted fresh vegetables)" for Indonesian stock market. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the global economy, the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) rose more than 22% against the trend throughout the year, reaching a ten-year high and ranking among the top performing major stock indices in Southeast Asia and even globally.

This significant 'wealth effect' directly ignited the enthusiasm for retail investment and accelerated the process of 'retail investors' in the market. For securities firms, the influx of massive new retail investors has made the mobile application market the core battlefield for acquiring customers. In the face of highly volatile market conditions, if securities firms want to truly achieve the key leap from "holding licenses" to "acquiring users", they must establish data-driven growth capabilities.

1. Clear understanding of the battlefield situation: Using the "DianDian Data" application market monitoring tool, real-time insight into core indicators such as competitor downloads, monthly active users (MAU), retention rates, etc., to deeply analyze Indonesian users' search preferences and behavior trajectories. Only by mastering first-hand data can we lay a solid foundation for strategy formulation and avoid "blindly following the elephant".

2. Implementing cost reduction and efficiency improvement through ASO: Based on point data monitoring, in this context, through ASO (Application Store Optimization) strategy, the package name, title, keywords, and description of the application can be finely polished to maximize the acquisition of high intention natural traffic without significantly increasing advertising budget, thereby significantly improving conversion and retention rates.

3. Avoiding compliance risks: The Indonesian Financial Supervisory Authority (OJK) has strict definitions for the promotion of financial apps, and aggressive "list topping" behavior can easily trigger anti fraud mechanisms in app stores. Monitoring the health of the download curve through data and ensuring that the growth pace complies with the compliance framework is the bottom line for the long-term steady progress of the business.

DianDian predicts that based on the growth trajectory of investors until early 2026 (with approximately 6 million new additions that year), the monthly average increase can be estimated to be at least 500000. If this growth rate is maintained, by the end of 2026, the total number of investors in Indonesia's capital market is expected to exceed 27 million, including stock investors who may cross the 11 million mark - meaning that a medium-sized city's population will flood the capital market every month.

With the accelerated entry of giants such as Guotai Haitong Securities and Robinhood, market education and customer acquisition competition will upgrade synchronously. In the long run, after the giants complete localization adaptation, the market growth rate is expected to further increase. But during the critical window period when users' minds have not yet solidified, licenses are just admission tickets - the real winner lies in who can undertake this million level new traffic with data-driven refined operations.