Asia's Grows Resilience to Drive Growth

This week the Team here in Asia have been catching up with client's in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Across our diverse portfolio, from financial services to manufacturing, we have been focusing on Resilience : Risk, Corporate Governance, Cyber Security, Crisis and Technology Management, amongst other things.

Included within that were a number of invitations to spend time amongst Asia's Industry Regulators in each location.

Right now Asia is once again in listening mode - there is a common eagerness to understand what the adaptive 'high water mark' is in good governance, standards and regulation across all areas.

Focus is on how which ones to mature, integrate, implement and monitor. Asia is looking towards the West where some of the world's foremost leading practices already exist. Asia has rapidly caught up and now it is checking in again.

Out here a number of economies have had low returns now for several years. But Asian markets have changed, experiencing signifcant investment in 2025, which will continue this year. Local market commentators say external investors have historically been cautious of China's large jurisdictional influence. Now, according to pundits, that's all changed with the uncertainty around trade policies and geopolitical shifts in the West.

Here, colleagues tell me, the region is expected to contribute over 60% to global growth this coming year.

Businesses have rewired their thoughts into areas where investors see markets as more stable and with lower risk. Governments and regulators are looking to enhance, preserve and embed that stabilisation, defining a safe well groomed and governed environment which continues to attract the confidence of investors. Old money and new.

In the West we have spent years being leaders in creating good corporate practices. Specialist institutes like the BCI, IRM, CGI and EPC have all helped articulate and mature this. Many of those individuals at the cutting edge of thought leadership have gone on to participate in and influence, first country and then internationally accepted standards such as ISOs.

In turn good practice and international ISO's have influenced industry specific sectors (finance, health, manifacturing etc) which have been collated by governments and regulators alike. Why reinvent the wheel? What has become obvious from leading offshore houses is the accelerating growth in reshaping offshore finance. Rising consumption and the creation of new forms of private wealth are also adding to the generation of demand led and increasingly more sophisticated financial products and services.

Offshore centres are well positioned to address this new breed of high-net-worth individuals with a sudden scale of wealth creation. Some leading experts are predicting that combining all these factor by 2030, only four years away, Asia's middle class will drive half the global consumption.

Today Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai with their string of legal and maturing regaultory systems and global connectivity are a global hot bed in continuing to attract capital.

They are looking to stay ahead.

For the West both the challenge and the opportunity is to join that wider Offshore Group of well known names and become strategically placed with their unique environments to service signigficant growth.

Regulation and good practice has often been seen a an unecessary cost of doing business in many markets. The reality is somewhat different. Tailored and simpile regaultion that provides a stable environment is part of the clear platform that drives growth.