This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 28, 2022 - March 6, 2022

US-based global banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co has over the last five years grown its workforce by close to 40% in Malaysia, keen to tap opportunities in what it considers to be one of its focus markets, says its new managing director and senior country officer for Malaysia, Wong Hooi Ching.

The group has four operating entities here.

“We have the commercial banking arm, the securities arm, and not many people know this but we also have the services arm, which is basically what we call a corporate centre that provides middle-and-back office support to JPMorgan branches and affiliates globally. Apart from these, we have a Labuan branch,” she tells The Edge in her first interview since taking the helm of JP Morgan Malaysia in January.

Wong, a Malaysian, took over from Steve Clayton, who had been leading the organisation since July 2011. She is currently the only female head of a commercial bank in Malaysia.

“Over the last five years, our staff force has grown nearly 40% — within the services business alone, headcount more doubled. And, even during the Covid-19 pandemic, there was consistent growth in the number of employees at the lower end of single digits, percentage-wise,” Wong says. She is, however, unable to disclose the exact headcount, citing group policy. “We strongly believe in always opening up employment opportunities to local talent, and we bring in talent where the business needs it.

“Additionally, Malaysia is a focus country for us globally,” she adds.

It is understood that Singapore is JPMorgan’s biggest market within Asean, business-wise.

Asked if JP Morgan Malaysia continues to be on expansion mode, Wong says: “I would not call it a huge expansion, but we’re not reducing operations here.”

Speaking broadly about the strategy for Malaysia, Wong says the group wants to expand its network, product capability and local team strength. “[These], we believe, will bridge the requirements of our clients in Malaysia, together with our product capability, network and access that we offer to our clients globally. That’s very important to us. So, we have continued to replace headcount as and when we have natural attrition, and we’ve also continued to grow as and when the business has a requirement.”

JPMorgan has been operating in Malaysia as a full-fledged commercial bank since 1964, serving large Malaysian corporates, financial institutions, foreign corporates and the public sector.

Apart from being the top foreign broker in Malaysia, it is also a market leader in US dollar Swift.

JPMorgan economists recently predicted that the US Federal Reserve will likely raise interest rates by 25 basis points at all nine of its meetings until March 9 next year in a bid to ease inflation, joining other Wall Street banks that expect fast policy tightening.

“The whole market is getting ready for a period of interest rate hikes,” she adds.

“There is volatility as well, arising from geopolitical tensions,” Wong says, when asked about capital market opportunities in Malaysia amid that scenario.

“However, if you were to look at the equity capital market (ECM) space, our belief is that there continues to be excess liquidity in the market. There continues to be strong investor support for good deals where, if the valuation makes sense, there is interest to get deals done.

“In the debt capital market space, we do expect that most of the bond issuance this year will have a green and ESG (environmental, social and governance) relevance to it.

“In fact, our belief is that one-third of bonds issued this year in Asia ex-Japan will actually be green or ESG-related,” she adds.

She points out that, globally, JPMorgan is the biggest underwriter of green and ESG-related bonds.

As for JP Morgan Malaysia’s deal pipeline, Wong says that in the investment banking space, it sees a lot of opportunities in industries that benefit from the economic reopening.

“[There are opportunities] in industries that benefit from interest rate hikes, which are financial institutions, and also in consumer and hospitality-driven industries. We also think there is a lot of value to be seen in the healthcare industry,” she says.

“In the corporate banking space, what we are seeing is clients becoming a lot more focused on making their supply chain more efficient. This could be along the lines of diversifying their reliance on suppliers, looking across their network of suppliers, because some of our clients globally have actually been impacted by the supply chain issues that many countries faced during the pandemic,” she adds.

JP Morgan Malaysia took the No 1 spot among foreign banks in terms of investment banking wallet share in the country last year, based on Dealogic rankings. It also led in terms of ECM.

Interestingly, Wong says JP Morgan Malaysia is hoping to work with recipients of Malaysia’s digital banking licences, particularly in the area of digital payments and remittances.

Next month, Bank Negara Malaysia is expected to announce up to five successful recipients.

“If you look at the CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of digital payments expected in the next five years, it’s about 13%. And remittances, we’re looking at about 18%. One of the values that we can bring to these new [digital bank] players in the market is actually the ability to access our global markets for foreign exchange rates.

“The fact that we are a global bank present in over 60 countries, we can provide that access into the various clearing systems that we are a member of,” she explains.

Separately, Wong notes that ESG is increasingly becoming a topical theme for the bank’s clients. “They are in various stages [of the ESG journey] … some could be at the framework stage, at the implementation stage, while others are looking for some kind of assessment to see how far they have come.”

Within Asia, JPMorgan has two other country heads — in Vietnam and Hong Kong — who are female.

“To me, I take a lot of comfort in knowing that it is not only JPMorgan that is focusing on the diversity agenda. I can actually see that within Malaysian corporates, and also financial institutions and in the fund [management] space, there has been a lot of focus on empowering and building up female leadership as well as female participation in the workforce. So, I think we are moving in the right direction,” Wong says.

She takes a practical view of her status as one of the few females in leadership positions in a traditionally male-dominated industry.

“For me, my focus is, I need to get the job done,” she states simply. “But having said that, being a mum to an eight-year-old girl, I hope I would be able to set an example to young girls in Malaysia — do not think that there is a glass ceiling, do not think that you won’t be able to get somewhere with hard work. I’ve done it and I want to be successful and an example to our young people.”

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