Korean brokerage firm Mirae Asset Daewoo said Wednesday that its customer deposits exceeded 300 trillion won ($252 billion) as of end-August, amid growing interest in stock investments in times of ultralow interest rates.

At the end of last month, the securities firm’s customer deposits neared 301 trillion won, up more than 60 trillion won from the 239 trillion won recorded at the end of last year.

The customer deposits include retail and corporate investors’ money put in their securities, bonds and other financial products, according to the officials.

The whopping figure was especially attributed to increases in local and overseas stocks, pensions and direct customer assets. As the number of newly opened stock trading accounts reached about 700,000, the amount of customers with over 100 million won in assets hit 215,000, the company said.

Mirae Asset’s local clients’ overseas stock assets also surpassed 14 trillion won, up 7.2 trillion won this year.

Recently, pension assets and non-face-to-face customers’ direct assets also exceeded 15 trillion won and 20 trillion won, respectively.

The results were led by returning higher investment profits to customers through portfolio diversification and its high-value services, along with early preparation for digital transformation and the contactless era, Mirae Asset said.

“Our core value is to enhance values for all our clients. So we’ll put all-out efforts to provide well-balanced investment portfolios, based on blue chip assets, for our clients,” said Choi Hyun-man, executive vice chairman and CEO of Mirae Asset Daewoo.

By Jie Ye-eun (yeeun@heraldcorp.com)