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PHOTO (COLOR): Green Line's See: trading shares on-line

In the past year, the volume of information available on-line for investors has exploded, with Internet sites offering everything from annual reports to stock quotes. By far the biggest innovation, however, is the ability to trade securities over the World Wide Web--a service now available from at least a dozen U.S. brokerages. This fall, Toronto-Dominion Bank's Green Line Investor Services plans to follow suit with the launch of a service it calls WebBroker. According to Green Line president John See, WebBroker will not only be the first such operation in Canada, it will also be one of the most secure Internet trading systems in existence.

Currently being tested on a small group of Green Line clients, WebBroker allows investors to send buy and sell orders directly from their computers, using a special password and identification number. Already, 30 per cent of the discount broker's transactions are performed automatically by clients using the touch pads of their telephones or a computer with proprietary software that links to a Green Line broker. With the Internet's rising popularity, See says, "allowing people to trade on the Net just makes sense."

Moreover, See claims that WebBroker is virtually tamperproof, thanks to a multilayered security system based on the latest Netscape software. In technical terms, WebBroker uses a 128-bit encryption system compared with the 40-bit encryption used by most U.S. brokers. That extra speed and power allows Green Line to use a far more complicated coding system to safeguard client information. Explains See: "We think it is one of the most secure systems on the Internet." Investors will no doubt be hoping he is right.