In our new edition of the Hudson HK CEO Series, we interviewed Calvin Ng, Alternate Chief Executive – ZA Bank and Hui Siu-Ming – Associate Manager, Strategic Partnership.
This interview throws light on what it takes to land a role with ZA, navigating one’s career in a trail-blazing virtual bank in Hong Kong.

 

Interview Attendees:

• Calvin Ng – Alternate Chief Executive – ZA Bank
• Hui Siu-ming – Associate Manager, Strategic Partnership, ZA Bank
• Sid Sibal – VP, Greater China & Country Manager, HK
• Benedict Chan – Senior Business Manager, Hudson HK

 

Introduction

 

Could you tell us a little about yourself and your how you joined ZA Bank?

 

I joined ZA back in 2019 September at the founding stage when they first opened in Cyberport. It wasn’t even an office space…it was an exhibition centre. Just chairs and desks, very empty space. It was like our garage. I was the employee number#10 in the Bank. I saw the bank grow from nothing to being one of the 8 virtual banks to get their banking license.

In the early days, when I took the plunge to move from a large traditional bank to a digital bank, I was frequently asked the question if we would even get the license. It wasn’t easy to make this move from a large established bank – but I felt that this opportunity was a once in a lifetime opportunity. You don’t see HK releasing new banking licenses every year – it was a precious opportunity to start afresh and really rethink all the processes on how a bank operates and really test the limits. Coming up with a good idea is hard, but executing it is even harder. I am proud to say that we really make ideas come to life in speed.

What is VB in HK going to look like going forward:

think VB as a category will no longer be a ‘category’ – it will become something very normal. If you look at the virtual banks today, we can start to clear differentiate each of one our personality and business focus.

When the 8 VB licenses were issued, the public saw all the VBs as the same, just offering general banking services. But now fast forward 2 years – we all have significant differentiators. At ZA, we always want to be #1 and maintain that position.

We are also making good foundation in business banking services which needs a lot of work. We aspire to be a business with all financial services, not just retail.

Do you see consolidation?

We are not competing with each other. The adoption for digital banking has been strong. We don’t really need to compete, we have so much more to do and achieve. I think if we all stay on our course/roadmaps and work on perfecting our services, we can all coexist and do well.

User Experience

What would you say to users who are still on the fence?

Banking is a service; it’s built on pure trust and trust takes time to build. If we turn the clock back before bank’s like ZA existed, imagine how a bank account was opened. It would take hours, days and possibly a week in back and forth queuing and document collection. And now, with your face ID, a few clicks and your HKID you are ready to go.

Think about things like payment – we didn’t have things like instant payments. And now when you spend, a notification appears instantly and accounts are adjusted. This is now very normal, but it wasn’t before virtual banking. I could name countless such examples which we now take for granted – but they make all the difference to our users and make their banking experience far more pleasant. Another frequent frustration was losing your PIN for your bank account. It used to be quite a journey from losing your PIN to getting a new one restored. But now, it’s a quick process with virtual banking.

What does your current user-base look like and what’s coming up?

A significant chunk of our user-base is young professionals. We need to continue to work on developing and designing services for our senior population. We have just launched our Wealth Management and Insurance products – we believe this is going to bring a lot of value to the senior population of users. There is a lot more in store and we will share it with the public as and when it’s ready to launch.

 

Interviewing with ZA Bank

 

What do you look for when you interview candidates for ZA Bank and what sort of employees succeed within the group?

A great role model for someone who is a successful employee is, Hui Siu-ming!

In general, we look at hard skills but equally, we look at soft skills – such as a ‘challenging’ mindset, attitude, passion. We are a fast-growing bank and we need people with the same mindset. When a train is going really fast – there will always be some degree of uncertainty and we need to ensure people are aligned on our vision and our common goal. People will have different views on certain things and that’s completely fine; as long as the end-objective of project/product is unified to our vision. To put it simply, mindset is as important for me as hard skills.

 

Candidates who have no experience in Fintech, but have strong desire to move into this space; what is your advice to them?

Taking Hui Siu-ming as an example. He is a Bachelor of Science majoring in Astrophysics. He demonstrated his passion. He is a user of our platform before he joined us and is brave and willing to challenge what can be improved. Someone who has a mindset to continuously improve.

“The Great Resignation” trend has not only impacted the rest of the world, but also Hong Kong. In the last 18 months, turnover rate in HK has been significantly higher than normal. We are facing a global talent-short market with COVID disrupting several industries and a hiring surge across most industries, not just in Tech. How is ZA tackling these challenges?

I personally think the HK “great resignation” trend didn’t start in the last 2-3 years, but when the 8 VBs came into the HK market at the same time. Technology is just an enabler, but we need people to execute things.

Here in ZA, we spend more time to focus on our homegrown talent. We see the potential of select few people who can rotate into different business line and they take on bigger roles. We trust young talent and empower them. Where I came from, someone like Hui Siu-ming was too junior to talk to an MD. This culture doesn’t exist in ZA Bank. That’s the level of trust and openness to potential failure, which directly breeds innovation.

We hire from different locations and background – in general we have 2 main offices in Shenzhen and HK. Shenzhen is more of our engineering hub, there is a strong supply of quality talent as compared to the demand over there.

How do you interview candidates at all levels of seniority?

I believe recruiting is a 2-way street. Candidates and employers have an equal right and opportunity to get to know the job-fit for each other. I’m usually very candid with whoever I interview and paint a true picture. Finding the right people in the right seat is what I call productivity – we try to ensure as best we can to make this happen.

Success story - Hui Siu-Ming

Tell us about yourself and what you do in ZA?

Associate Manager, Strategic Partnership - ZA Bank
I cover 3 main areas: Retail Partnership, Wholesale Partnership and Insurance Partnership.

Why did you choose the ZA internship over other banks in Hong Kong?

I was referred by a friend to interview with ZA. I studied in the UK and interned in a pharmaceutical firm. I wanted to have different industry exposure, but wasn’t interested in traditional banks and loved the new concept of virtual banks.

I interviewed with ZA during 2020 during the pandemic and was part of the Bloom-app team. My first campaign was the Coffee-Buy1 get1, which was quite exciting.

 

How would you describe your experience working in ZA Bank?

My first few days were really packed. At the time I joined, we were launching 7 shopping mall (all over HK) rebate programs, so it was in the heat of the campaign. I had the opportunity to do lots of market visits – which was really exciting. I felt very welcomed – there was very minimal hierarchy, it was quite modern, energetic and young vibe.

I still remember my first day, I was the only one wearing a suit and my boss pulled me aside and told me to by myself and that I was allowed to wear casual clothes like a t-shirt.

What was the biggest challenge during this internship?

Sometimes there were times where I felt like I didn’t have much experience on executing a project, but my managers and the team were super encouraging and taught me a lot to ensure I was up-to-speed. Another key challenge for me was ‘business communication’ skills, as a fresh graduate, it wasn’t easy for me to liaise directly with senior people in our partners organizations. Things like writing professional emails, empathizing with businesses who were hardest hit during COVID and bringing that human/compassionate touch while staying professional.

Describe a typical day in your internship?

Every day is a busy day, there is a lot to do and a lot to learn. We would have a lot of projects/campaigns on-going simultaneously, so planning your day is critical. A typical day in the partnerships team would start with internal meetings in the morning followed by external meetings in the afternoon with our partner organizations. On other days, I would be shadowing my managers on project planning, so I had the chance to view the partnership project from start to finish.

What would you advice potential new interns looking to apply and join ZA Bank’s internship program?

Ask the right questions. As a new joiner you might be shy, but speak up and ask questions. Most of the colleagues are very happy to help and include you in their projects.