The Capital Company - making solid progress

Harmen Overdijk of Leo Wealth

May 17, 2019

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1. How many years is it now since you have set up the business?

2. Why did you decide that it was important to have a business in the US?

3. Since you started the firm - have you evolved your value proposition?

4. What are your priorities for the year ahead?

Video transcript

1. How many years is it now since you have set up the business?

The Capital Company came together in late 2016, so that's about two and a half years, and since then we have seen quite significant growth. When we came together with Jessica and Todd, we initially had about 10 people. Now we have about 25 people in Hong Kong. The number of clients is growing steadily, but more importantly as more and more of our clients have international needs, we made an agreement to acquire a US-based firm to service our US clients and clients with US interests better. That's still under consideration with the regulators in the US for final approval, so that merger hasn't completed yet. But we expect that very soon now. And this would effectively double the size of our operations.

2. Why did you decide that it was important to have a business in the US?

We see more and more demand for US financial services. From more traditional US expats based here in Hong Kong that need long-term financial planning and investment services. But also more and more Asian families with US interests. That can be as simple as having a property in the US, with tax planning or insurance planning is required to cover estate taxes. Or in a lot of cases where children of the family go and study in the US, decide they really like it there, find a job, eventually get a green card. This makes long-term estate planning for the whole family more complex, and a lot of firms in Hong Kong are not really willing or capable to provide good advice around that. That's one of the areas that our firm specialises in. By having a US office that's fully SEC-licensed and FINRA-licensed, we are able to offer the full range of financial services based out of the US.

3. Since you started the firm - have you evolved your value proposition?

Over the last two years we've definitely moved from being mostly an asset manager to a financial adviser to what we call "global citizens". Meaning clients or families with international interests, meaning assets in different countries, pension, plans to move to another country later in life, having children in different countries. And what also often happens is mixed marriages of different nationalities. We noticed we have huge demands with clients to receive proper tax planning advice, estate planning advice, next to asset management. So we have definitely moved more towards the advice part of the business where we help families really think long-term what makes more sense for them, either from tax planning or estate planning, and only then look at how to invest their money for the long term.

4. What are your priorities for the year ahead?

The main priority is to expand our service range - what we can offer to different global citizens. Another key priority is obviously to make a successful integration with the firm in the US. We have just re-branded our firm, not changing the name but updating the look and feel of our firm. We have made it a little bit more fresh and younger. We launched a completely new website with a totally different look. The second part of that is actually that we're going to re-brand the firm in the US, which currently operates under a different name, but once we receive regulatory approval for the merger will operate under The Capital Company name.

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