Vanguard's joint venture in China with Ant Group has acquired 200,000 clients in the first 100 days since the launch of an investment advisory partnership by the world’s second-largest asset manager and the technology affiliate of the ecommerce group Alibaba.
Pennsylvania-based Vanguard has built an army of more than 30m clients worldwide, which it plans to multiply by offering low-cost financial advice to the 900m users of Ant’s technology platform across China as part of a government-backed scheme designed to accelerate the adoption of mutual funds.
The 200,000 new clients have made significantly higher commitments than expected, allocating a total of $315m (Rmb2.2bn) to the joint venture.