Taiwan’s Cathay United Bank follows client money to Singapore
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The group’s Cathay United Bank is ramping up headcount in the city-state to around 200 by 2025, from 100 two years ago.
ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
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Singapore - Cathay Financial Holding, Taiwan’s largest financial firm by assets, is hiring more staff in Singapore to follow shifting regional money flows as its clients expand their presence in South-east Asia.
The group’s Cathay United Bank is ramping up headcount in the city-state to around 200 by 2025, from 100 two years ago, said Mr Winfield Wong, chief executive of the bank’s Singapore unit.
Recent additions include relationship managers for corporate clients who are expanding in the region as well as private bankers, he said.
The growth plan underscores how Singapore and its neighbours are benefiting as US-China tensions prompt companies to diversify investments and manufacturing throughout South-east Asia.
“There are huge outbound investment flows as a result of supply chain diversification,” Mr Wong said in an interview.
Taiwan’s Vanguard International Semiconductor and NXP Semiconductors are teaming up to build a US$7.8 billion (S$10.5 billion) chip wafer plant in Singapore, the companies have said. Foxconn Technology, a major supplier to Apple, is among the companies adding plants in Vietnam.
Cathay Financial Holding, controlled by the billionaire Tsai family, is a financial conglomerate whose interests span insurance, asset management and brokerage. Mr Tsai Hong-tu, whose net worth totals US$5.3 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is its chairman.
In 2024, the Taiwanese bank is looking to add more staff in information technology, risk, transaction management and capital solutions, Mr Wong said.
Cathay United Bank operates in nine South-east Asian markets.
The lender’s private-bank assets under management in Singapore doubled to several hundred million dollars since the business started there in 2020, Mr Wong said. The minimum threshold for an account is around US$2 million.
Mr Wong himself is among the recent hires. The Singaporean joined Cathay in February 2023, after more than 12 years at HSBC Holdings, where he rotated around Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore. He has also worked at Citigroup and ANZ Group Holdings.
China was once the top destination for Taiwanese investors and accounted for 84 per cent of Taiwan’s foreign direct investment at its peak in 2010. That dropped in 2023 to 11 per cent and lagged behind a group including India, Australia and South-east Asia for the second year in a row.
Taiwan’s banking sector’s total exposure to China has contracted for 12 consecutive quarters and reached the lowest ever in the first three months of 2024, according to data from the self-governing island’s Financial Supervisory Commission. BLOOMBERG
