Stock exchange and regulator team up to ease doing business

Fast. Easy. Efficient. That’s what companies looking to list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) will experience in the near future when the Securities and Exchange Commission and the SET open up a one-stop center to speed up the listing process.

By combining and consolidating their separate reporting requirements, the regulator and the exchange believe they can make a substantial contribution to ease of doing business and increase the appeal of the capital market.

“We plan to work together to develop the Thai capital market’s competitiveness to support the country’s 20-year national strategy by building connectivity and accessibility,” said Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) secretary-general Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol.

Increasing ease of doing business is a policy priority of the Thai government, and the country’s score in the annual global Ease of Doing Business report published by the World Bank has been steadily improving. The Bank ranks Thailand 27th among 190 economies in its 2019 report.

The SEC and the SET said they would collaborate on three core projects: the one-stop service center, one report, and one ESG (environmental, social and governance) project. The one-stop service center will provide end-to-end answers for companies about funding and listing rules.

The collaboration is also designed to eliminate confusion. The SET and SEC will record questions from listed firms and companies looking to list together with responses from both agencies and enter into them into a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

The agencies can then reference each other’s responses to maintain accuracy and consistency in the information they give to investors.

The SET is the second-largest exchange in the region following the one in Singapore. In 2014, the SET became the first exchange in Southeast Asia to join the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchange Initiative.