Bloomberg: KGI Ramps Up Hiring Top Talents for Wealth Management Team in Hong Kong and Singapore
KGI Securities Co., a Taipei-based financial firm, is seeking to hire in Hong Kong and Singapore to boost its wealth management operations, taking on bigger rivals in Asia in the hunt for a growing pool of money.
In Hong Kong, the firm is looking to hire as many as 50 new advisers over the next two to three years, adding to the current 300, according to James Wey, head of international wealth management at KGI Asia Ltd., who joined from JPMorgan Chase & Co. last year. In Singapore, it’s planning to have 20 to 25 advisers, up from about five.
“Building a regional champion is what I want to do,” said Wey, adding that he’s made hires from his old firm, JPMorgan, as well as UBS Group AG and Nomura Holdings Inc. “A lot of the people joining us are all from the big boys.”
KGI is joining other regional firms — such as Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings Ltd. and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. — in boosting headcount to attract wealth flows. Increasingly these firms are competing with the likes of global wealth managers like UBS and Citigroup Inc.
Hong Kong has been stepping up efforts to attract wealthy with tax concessions and residency plans. Hong Kong’s private wealth assets under management could nearly double to US$2.3 trillion by 2030, rivaling Zurich, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
KGI has booking centers in Singapore and Hong Kong and during Covid, Singapore was a “very popular” destination, but flows are much more balanced between Hong Kong and Singapore now, said Wey.
Given the surge in the Taiwan dollar and the strong performance in the local stock market, investors may lock in gains and look outside of Taiwan for investments, according to Wey. Traditionally, Taiwanese investors have mostly looked at the US, but going forward, they will be “much more global” in their approach, he said.
“A very popular conversation I’m having with Taiwanese investors are what’s going on in Japan,” said Wey. Overall, wealthy clients are “assessing” their holdings in North America, especially on physical assets such as properties which are subject to taxes, he said.
Hires
KGI last year hired ex-JPMorgan research executive Cusson Leung as chief investment officer for the international wealth business, and this year Raymond Yeung, who previously worked at China Merchants Bank International and JPMorgan.
Wey said that the firm’s more “transparent” compensation — which is more a percentage of total revenue — and less bureaucracy has helped to attract talent from larger firms.
“It’s sort of like you eat what you kill,” he said.
The sweet spot for KGI is clients with US$5 million to US$10 million, according to Wey. It takes one to two weeks to open accounts for simple cases and no more than a month for more complex ones.
According to Hong Kong’s Private Wealth Management Association, the number of firms targeting this lower wealth segment will see the biggest jump over the next five years.
The firm manages about US$10 billion of offshore wealth assets, with most coming from private client services. It had revenue of NT$37 billion (US$1.2 billion) last year, up 31% from 2023.
It’s a subsidiary of KGI Financial Holdings Co., which has total assets of over US$120 billion. The firm changed its name from China Development Financial in 2024.
30 May 2025