Introducing the Endowus HK team

Empowering investors in Hong Kong

Welcome to Endowus HK! 

As Chief Client Officer, I’m pleased to introduce to you the core team behind Endowus, a Singapore-headquartered digital wealth platform that is expanding into Hong Kong. I was born and raised in Hong Kong, and I’m incredibly excited that we are launching in my vibrant home market. 

Prior to Endowus, I spent close to a decade in the wealth management industry, at leading banks in Hong Kong and Singapore, including Morgan Stanley and Nomura. While working at larger financial institutions, I had always found it challenging to manage my personal wealth in a holistic manner and to invest in institutional-quality products at a low cost. That’s why I left private banking — so I could help make investing more accessible to everyone, through Endowus. 

Today, I spend my time delivering a seamless digital platform experience to our clients, while maintaining a human touch in our wealth conversations with clients. At a personal level, I entered a new stage in my life last year when I became a mother, and this has influenced my investing philosophy. Beyond planning for my own financial future, I want to also ensure that I give my child the best in life. Investing offers peace of mind for parents like me, as it enables us to be fully present for our children while our money works harder for us in the background. It’s also important to teach our children the right financial values and habits from young.

As we continue to promote financial literacy, offer better wealth advice, and improve access to investment products for all, my hope is that we will empower more investors to make informed decisions about their money and achieve their life goals.

Get to know the Endowus leadership team

It’s also my pleasure to introduce other members of the bigger Endowus team. The company was founded to solve the investment problems that we and our families had faced. Today, our team is made up of more than 130 people with decades of experience from leading financial institutions and technology companies including Morgan Stanley, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Vanguard, Ant Financial, Fidelity, McKinsey & Co, Grab, Amazon, Alibaba, Morningstar, and more. Our diverse expertise and experience in asset management, private banking, investment banking, and consumer technology have prepared us to better serve you.

Steffanie Yuen, Managing Director and Head of Hong Kong, leads Endowus’ business in Hong Kong, our first regional expansion. She will be positioning Endowus as an essential partner for wealth management  and retirement planning  in Hong Kong. Steffanie is also currently Co-Chair of the WealthTech & InvestTech Committee of the Fintech Association of Hong Kong (FTAHK) and serves on the global committee of 100WFintech Global Visibility Initiative at 100 Women in Finance. Before joining Endowus, Steffanie was Managing Director at Value Partners, the largest homegrown fund house in Hong Kong. Before that, she was Business Development and Strategic Partnerships Director at Alibaba's fintech affiliate Ant Group. 

Steffanie did not foresee a career in fintech until she was tasked to manage a venture capital fund that focused on investing in fintechs in China. There, she saw how driven they were to make a difference, and that sparked her entrepreneurial spirit and desire to make a bigger societal impact. She thus joined the Endowus team, determined to tackle the underlying problems in the wealth industry — a lack of good advice, and costly investment products that were not aligned with clients’ best interests.

Samuel Rhee, Group Chairman and Chief Investment Officer (CIO), heads the Endowus Group Investment Office, which is made up of 10 investment professionals. Sam is also responsible for the group’s asset allocation and investment selection across all offerings. He has focused his time on building Endowus as a holistic wealth platform that can make investing and smart financial planning easy and painless.

Prior to Endowus, he was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and CIO of Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Asia, with three decades of institutional investing experience in Singapore, Hong Kong, and London.

Sam is a firm believer that individuals should have access to the same knowledge and resources that are available to institutional investors. He has witnessed firsthand how retail investors are often sorely disadvantaged compared to institutional investors. He therefore passionately advocates digital adoption in wealth services, and making investing and smart financial planning easy and painless.

Sam started to explore the fintech space after he was moved by the passion and tenacity of fintech founders he met during his time as an angel investor. When the opportunity presented itself, he took the chance to build Endowus as a first-of-its-kind, low-cost digital wealth platform, and has never looked back.

Gregory Van, CEO, is passionate about making investing accessible and at the lowest achievable cost for all investors. Greg drives the company’s growth and strategic execution. He started his career in investment banking at UBS, advising and fundraising for private equity firms and venture capital firms in the Asia Pacific region. He then joined Grab in its early days and was part of the pioneer team that launched the firm’s digital payments services across Southeast Asia. 

Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, Greg learnt from a young age that a business should solve specific gaps in the market. Watching his grandparents work tirelessly to give the family a more comfortable life shaped Greg into the entrepreneur he is today. His grandparents poured all their hard-earned money into the family, which resulted in them not having much for themselves when they retired. It struck Greg that retirement adequacy poses a significant challenge for many households in the region as the population rapidly ages — and that Endowus could be the solution.

Through Endowus, invest better to live better

Together, the Endowus team is focused on empowering everyone to invest better to live better. Our mission is to provide all investors with expert advice and institutional-quality investment products — which were previously only available to private banks — at low, fair, and transparent fees. We are driven by the belief that everyone deserves to invest well and build holistic portfolios to achieve their life goals.

We are paid only by you; we don’t accept commissions, ever, from product providers. This allows us to always recommend the products most suited for you. You get 100% Cashback on all commissions, known as trailer fees — this is an industry-first practice. Endowus has returned more than US$4.5 million in these fund-distributor commissions (as of January 2023) to customers since inception in Singapore. We also do not charge a subscription fee, transaction fee, or any other hidden fees, unlike other platforms. 

We are unlike any other wealth or fund platforms out there, and we are here to bring change to the industry.

The Endowus team is grateful for the trust and support from our tens of thousands of clients. We remain committed to doing what is always in the best interest of our clients, to help you achieve better investing outcomes.

Endowus has also recently acquired Carret Private, a Hong Kong-based wealth manager and multi-family office, to become one of the largest independent wealth managers in Asia. With the acquisition, the Endowus group manages over US$4 billion in assets, as of June 30, 2022.

Once again, welcome to Endowus HK. We’re so happy that you’ve come on board. For those keen to join us on this journey, get started here.

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Risk Warnings

Investment involves risk. Past performance is not an indicator nor a guarantee of future performance or returns. Projected performance or returns is not guaranteed to materialise. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, and you may not get the full amount you invested. Rates of exchange may cause the value of investments to go up or down. Individual stock performance does not represent the return of a fund.

General risk warnings relating to collective investment schemes 

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Opinions

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