Bukalapak and Bareksa Officially Launch BukaReksa

Today (19/1) Bukalapak and Bareksa inaugurated the launch OpenMutual to target Bukalapak users, which now number 11,2 million people. This mutual fund product guaranteed by Bareksa is an investment product that is regulated and supervised by the OJK, both from mutual fund selling agents and mutual fund product companies.

Chairman of the OJK Capital Market Supervisory Commissioner Nurhaida said this product is a good innovation and goes in line with the regulator's efforts to continue to increase the depth of the capital market in Indonesia. According to him, the most important key in increasing the number of investors is making massive innovation and socialization breakthroughs.

In this case, it is related to how to make cooperation with other companies for easy access when buying mutual funds. "Today it is important for the development of the capital market to be able to develop further. We hope that there will be further collaborations that can be carried out so that public access to buying mutual funds becomes easier," he said, Thursday (19/1).

According to OJK data, over the past year, total managed funds (assets under management/AUM) the mutual fund industry of Rp. 338,6 trillion. When compared to the value of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015 of 11.540,8 trillion, this value is only around 2,93%. Meanwhile, the number of mutual fund investors in Indonesia is still small, as of August 26, 2016 the number was recorded at 340.869 people, or only 0,13% of the total population.

BukaReksa is a money market type mutual fund investment instrument that was created by PT CIMB-Principal Asset Management as an investment manager. The company will place investment funds with portion in time deposits of 45%-50%, cash 5%-10%, and bonds 40%-50%.

To access the BukaReksa feature, potential investors are only required to have a Bukalapak account and have a balance in BukaDompet with a minimum investment of IDR 10. Users can access the BukaReksa feature on the BukaDompet page or the MyLapak menu. Before buying mutual funds, users must fill out a form and then get a notification that the account opening has been approved.

For mutual fund purchases, the process only takes one working day. Meanwhile, BukaReksa can only be accessed via the Bukalapak desktop site. It is hoped that in the near future users will be able to access it through the Bukalapak application with a more visible appearance user friendly.

"The BukaReksa feature has been live on the Bukalapak website since approximately two weeks ago. The response has been positive, it has attracted more than 6 thousand investors with managed funds under Rp. 10 billion. In the future, we will perfect the display so that it can be accessed via mobile web and applications," explained Bukalapak co-founder and CFO Fajrin Rasyid.

For Bukalapak, the launch of this feature is one of the company's business diversification outside the marketplace by targeting financial services (fintech). At the same time increasing the utilization of the BukaDompet feature as an electronic wallet service provided by Bukalapak to store funds from sales and return transactions.

So far Bukalapak already has several services fintech others, such as BukaModal. BukaModal allows pelapak (seller's term in Bukalapak) to obtain capital loans from Bank BTPN and Modalku. This feature is specifically for sellers who have been selling for more than six months.

"Business diversification is reasonable to do, but currently the marketplace business is still the largest business contribution in Bukalapak."

Get ready for another new product soon

In the coming month, Bukalapak will continue to monitor the development of BukaReksa by making many improvements to attract more new users. In addition, Fajrin ensured that his party was open to launching other mutual fund products in the near future.

"We'll see first progress OpenReksa. It is possible that we will launch other mutual fund products in the near future, there have been discussions with several investment managers."

Bareksa as the APRD license holder will also continue to cooperate with several technology companies to become outlets for the sale of mutual fund instruments.

Co-founder and Chairman of Bareksa Karaniya Dharmasaputra said his party will continue to increase cooperation with other technology companies. Currently still in the discussion stage, so the identity of the company has not been disclosed.

Karaniya said the company will seize all cooperation opportunities from e-commerce companies, electronic wallets, and online travel agent (OTA). "We open all opportunities so that access to buying mutual funds becomes easier," he concluded.