Pension reform may boost Asia asset servicing

Asian asset holders have well over four-fifths of their estimated $22 trillion tied up in domestic deposits and fixed income markets. But BNY Mellon Asset Servicing’s Asia chief, Leow Chong Jin, believes pension reform and changing attitudes to risk and investment could result in a much higher proportion of these assets being placed outside of traditional markets in the future. By Christopher Jeffery

Leow Chong Jin, head of Asia at BNY Mellon Asset Servicing in Singapore, was tasked with building out Bank of New York's asset services business from scratch after joining the group from State Street in 2006. He set about creating dedicated sales, operations, product management and client services capabilities in the region, and now employs some 200 staff, mostly in Singapore, but also in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tokyo and, most recently, Beijing. "To be closer to our customers, we really needed to be