Nick Cheung named Executive of the Year for Financial Services at HKB Management Excellence Awards 2019

The executive was awarded for leading Morningstar Asia’s “Strategic growth and expansion” project.

Nick Cheung, chief executive of Morningstar Asia, has been honoured as Executive of the Year for Financial Services at the HKB Management Excellence Awards 2019 for his leadership in the company’s “Asia strategic growth and expansion” project.

The recognition comes at a time when the global financial services industry is dealing with difficulties, including slowing economic growth, geopolitical uncertainties notably the U.S.-China trade tensions, as well as heightening regulations and fee compressions. To address these challenges, Morningstar has upheld a long-term philosophy that aims to empower investor success through its wide range of solutions.

Morningstar is a leading provider of independent investment research in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. The company operates in 27 countries, where Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand are under Cheung’s leadership.

Morningstar provides an extensive line of products and services for investors, distributors and financial advisors, asset managers, as well as retirement plan providers and sponsors. It offers not only comprehensive, timely and accurate information on a wide range of investments and markets globally, but also unbiased ratings and technologically advanced analytical tools to empower individual and professional investors to make confident investment decisions and realize better outcomes.

Cheung’s strategic plan for Asia identifies three key directions. First is dealing with the evolving regulatory requirements which tend to differ from market to market in the region. This task entails developing a localised, governance-focused solution to ease the burden on Asia’s wealth managers. The solution helps guide their fund product recommendations and enhance their governance and due diligence framework during the advisory process.

Second is embracing technology-led transformation. Morningstar has equipped its research models with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities so that market data access, collection, and analysis could be more efficient and a personalised manner of data interpretation and product delivery could be implemented. This strategy is following the digital paradigm employed by the investment community to reduce costs, improve investment suitability and performance, and raise the level of operational efficiency.

Third is meeting the increasing demand for Morningstar’s research and data capabilities by adopting innovative ways to curate and interpret financial data. In view of this, Morningstar has proactively expanded the coverage of its Asian equity research and enhanced the historical stock tick data solution.

Cheung said by upholding Morningstar’s beliefs in transparency, digitalisation, due diligence, research and data, as well as human capital, it enables Morningstar Asia to develop market-leading solutions for investors to meet their financial goals in the years ahead.

Cheung pinpointed Morningstar Asia’s strategic expansion and growth targets: increase Morningstar Asia equity coverage more than 300 stocks by the end of 2020, increase headcounts for Morningstar Asia in key business areas, and build strategic alliances with other financial services providers in the region.

Morningstar has committed to investing in additional resources to address the challenges faced by the financial industry. Whilst the neighbour economies in the region, such as China and India, are also growing vastly, Morningstar’s presence in Hong Kong, the key international financial hub under Cheung’s leadership, is also under aggressive expansion. Over the years, Morningstar has consistently delivered research results based on timely, comprehensive data with a global reach. Cheung and the company empower investors by aggregating complex financial information into trusted source of investment and product solutions.

Watch the interview with Nick Cheung below to know more about his success:

The Hong Kong Business Management Excellence Awards was held on 21 November at Island Shangri-La Hong Kong. The awards aims to honour the city's most outstanding business leaders, including noteworthy individuals and teams whose initiatives have brought tangible business gains for their company's operations.

The 2019 nominees were judged by a panel consisting of Charbon Lo, Director at Crowe (HK) CPA Limited; Roy Lo Managing Partner at SHINEWING (HK) CPA Limited; Anthony Tam, Executive Director of Tax Advisory Services, Mazars Hong Kong; Andrew Ross, Managing Director at Baker Tilly Hong Kong; and Eugene Liu, Managing Partner at RSM Hong Kong.

If you would like to join the 2020 awards and be lauded as one of the most outstanding management executives of Hong Kong, please email [email protected].