[Digital Today reporter Sangyeop Oh] The integrated investment management account (IMA) market has moved into a three-way contest with NH Investment Securities joining, but the early enthusiasm has cooled as investment funds have shifted in large numbers to the stock market.

On March 23, the financial investment industry said NH Investment Securities was designated as the country’s third IMA operator after Korea Investment Securities and Mirae Asset Securities, following a resolution at a regular meeting of the Financial Services Commission on March 18.

Financial authorities judged that NH Investment Securities met statutory requirements such as capital, personnel and physical facilities, internal control systems and conflict-of-interest prevention systems.

An IMA is an account in which a securities firm manages customer deposits in corporate finance-related assets and bears the obligation to pay the principal. Combined with short-term notes, it can raise funds of up to 300 percent of its equity capital and use them for corporate finance and venture capital supply, making it a new source of revenue for large securities firms.

The marketability has already been confirmed. Korea Investment Securities quickly attracted funds after launching its first product late last year, and cumulative subscriptions through its third product were reported to have reached about 2.1 trillion won. Mirae Asset Securities also drew more than twice the funds sought for its first IMA product, confirming investor interest.

But the recent mood is different from the early stage. The subscription size for Korea Investment Securities’ fourth IMA product introduced this month is 300 billion won. That is smaller than its first and second products, which were sold with a 1 trillion won limit, and both the third and fourth products were adjusted to 300 billion won. That is about one-third of the earlier two products.

In particular, the second product, sold for four business days in January, ended in the 700 billion won range, short of the prepared 1 trillion won.

One interpretation is that interest allocated to IMAs has fallen relatively as money seeking higher expected returns has moved into the stock market. Investors’ attention is currently focused on stocks that can offer high returns in the short term.

With the KOSPI continuing to rise and brokerage and semiconductor stocks emerging as market leaders, closed-end products offering target returns of around 4 percent a year can only look relatively conservative.

Korea Investment Securities’ fourth product was designed as a closed-end structure with a two-year maturity, and Mirae Asset Securities’ second product was also reported to be prepared with a three-year maturity and a target return of about 4 percent.

Such a structure can be an advantage when markets are unstable, but it becomes a weakness as an uptrend steepens. From an investor’s perspective, it is likely they may judge it more advantageous to seek higher return opportunities in the stock market now rather than accept a structure of stable returns in exchange for having funds tied up for 2 to 3 years.

An analysis says an environment has formed in which IMAs are not likely to pull in funds as quickly as initially expected, as experience with direct investment has increased recently and psychological resistance to risky assets has also declined.

Securities firms’ concerns also lie here. Because an IMA is a product that must allocate a substantial portion of raised funds to corporate finance and productive finance, it is not a structure that works simply by selling well.

NH Investment Securities said it plans to manage funds mainly in corporate finance assets such as acquisition finance, corporate loans and corporate bonds, while expanding its investment scope to global private credit and stock funds. In the end, it must continuously discover investment targets that can secure both stability and profitability.

The regulatory burden is also not small. IMA operators must invest a certain ratio of raised funds in venture capital, and that ratio will rise in stages to 10 percent in 2026, 20 percent in 2027 and 25 percent in 2028.

That means IMAs were designed not as a simple substitute for high-interest deposits but as a system to support the real economy and corporate funding supply. But for securities firms, it also means the difficulty of management is that much higher.

In this situation, NH Investment Securities’ entry is meaningful in terms of expanding the market. Financial authorities also expect the additional designation will help securities firms respond to companies’ diverse funding needs and strengthen their function of supplying venture capital.

Still, the prevailing outlook is that the increase to three operators is unlikely to immediately overheat sales competition or sharply increase fund raising.

That is because Korea Investment Securities and Mirae Asset Securities have already secured a first-mover effect, and investors’ standards of judgment have also risen further recently.

It has become difficult to attract funds solely with the stability of being an obligation-to-pay-principal type, and it has become more important what assets are invested in and how, and whether a certain level of returns and stability can be secured at the same time.

An industry official said, "The IMA market has entered a stage where growth expectations and realistic limitations are being revealed together," and added, "In the early days of the system’s introduction, scarcity and novelty drove popularity, but now it is a phase where product competitiveness itself must be proven amid the stock market and investors’ raised expectations."

The official also pointed out, "NH Investment Securities’ participation has expanded the size, but the key to success depends not on the number of operators but on how persuasively each securities firm presents its management strategy and investment targets."