E TRADE Financial Corp., one of the largest US online discount stockbrokers that cater mainly to retail clients, has outsourced its customer services to the Philippines.

Lone Catanduanes Rep. Joseph Santiago, the new chairman of the House committee on information and communications technology, disclosed the positive development.

“We definitely welcome E TRADE’s resolve to entrust its customer services to the Philippines,” said Santiago, former chief of the National Telecommunications Commission.

“With this, we also expect E TRADE’s rivals in the rapidly growing US online discount brokerage space to consider the option of relegating their customer services to the Philippines, in order to stay cost-competitive,” Santiago added.

Santiago said E TRADE has outsourced its client services to the Philippine contact centers and back offices of Arlington, Virginia-based Access Worldwide Communications Inc., a business process outsourcing provider that specializes in customer management.

Access Worldwide, with offices in Makati City, supports a number of companies in a variety of industries, including financial services, technology, telecommunications, consumer products, healthcare and media.

New York, New York-based E TRADE is the third-largest US provider of online securities brokerage services and technology-based financial services, predominantly through the Internet.

E TRADE has more than 3.6 million mostly retail brokerage accounts that have more than $214 billion invested in the stock market.

The electronic broker handles an average of 171,387 trades every day.

E TRADE’s customers can buy and sell stocks, bonds, options, futures and over 6,000 non-proprietary mutual funds.

The company also has a banking business, with about 821,000 accounts.

E TRADE has a market capitalization of $8.2 billion. The only two other online brokers that are larger than E TRADE are San Francisco, California-based The Charles Schwab Corp., with a market capitalization of $24.5 billion, and Omaha, Nebraska-based TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., with a market capitalization of $10.2 billion.