Visionary leadership in action
Three winners of the Investors’ Choice Outstanding CEO Award share their strategies for delivering long-term shareholder value
Participants:
- Kerry Mok, president and CEO, Sats
- Lim Hock Chee, CEO, Sheng Siong
- Wee Ee Cheong, deputy chairman and CEO, UOB
Moderator: Francis Kan
Q: Can you share how you have set and communicated a clear strategic vision for your company, and how this vision has helped steer the company towards achieving its business goals and delivering value to shareholders?
Kerry Mok: The company’s strategy and vision are set through a rigorous development process involving our global leadership teams and the respective teams all working together. We also get input and guidance from our board to help refine and steer the strategic vision and direction. Once we have set and agreed on this, we put into place mechanisms to track and report on progress towards these goals. The strategy is cascaded internally through our management meetings, town hall meetings and team off-sites, so that everyone understands the strategy and how their roles fit into the big picture. This helps to drive ownership and a sense of purpose, which enables staff to think deeper about how we can better realise the company’s goals, and ultimately, drive greater value creation for the company and shareholders.
Lim Hock Chee: At Sheng Siong, we do not view ourselves as having a boss; instead, all our employees work together to serve our customers, who are our biggest bosses. Our colleagues have to be very clear about who our bosses are and focus on delivering the best quality, price and service to our customers. This has helped us to achieve our vision as one of Singapore’s preferred retailers and to expand internationally, while maintaining continuous growth and creating long-term value for our shareholders.
Wee Ee Cheong: As a Singapore home-grown bank, we are committed to the region for the long term. We have always been steadfast in our regional focus, starting from the string of regional acquisitions in the last 20 years to our recent acquisition of Citigroup’s consumer banking business in four Asean markets. Today, we have one of the most extensive regional footprints among leading regional banks.
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UOB’s ambition is to be the bank of choice for aspiring consumers in Asean. There are opportunities to expand our market share in a region with growing affluence. We also aim to be the No1 cross-border trade bank in Asean to connect and support customers to opportunities in this fast-growing region.
The ultimate aim of banking is to finance sustainable growth in the real economy. We want to be a responsible financial steward to help build the future of our customers, colleagues and stakeholders. The external environment can be fast-changing, but we are committed to doing right by our customers. This has always been our north star.
Q: How do you ensure that these principles are embedded in your company’s culture, and what measures have you put in place to maintain transparency and accountability at all levels?
Mok: Sats maintains a robust governance framework, featuring strong board oversight, rigorous internal controls and regular audits. Underlying this are the values that we demonstrate and live by on a daily basis. Having a strong process framework with an attitude of respect and drive for excellence helps to reinforce the culture of transparency and accountability.
Lim: With morality as our bedrock, we continue our legacy by leading through example. Only by walking the talk can we influence the entire team to protect the interests of our shareholders together. We have always exercised discipline and caution. Appropriate internal controls and regular audits are in place to ensure that all business operations meet necessary standards. Staying transparent enables us to maintain integrity and governance among our colleagues.
Wee: Our corporate culture is anchored by four key values – honour, enterprise, unity and commitment. The focus on these four values ensures that we have the right culture to bind our talents together as one team for our shared vision. In fact, our values-based culture is embedded in our performance assessment, where every employee is evaluated based on behaviours alongside key performance indicators.
Apart from these four key values, our corporate governance is built on the strong leadership of the board and management. The management works closely with board members, contributing to robust discussion with their diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Being honourable and building trust among our people is critical. This ensures that we are constantly doing right by our customers, stakeholders and colleagues, not just for today, but also for the future.
Q: How do you align your company’s short-term financial performance with its long-term strategic goals?
Mok: Indeed, this can be a delicate balance and there is no simple answer. We see ourselves as stewards of the company and are guided to do what we believe is right for the company now, while investing appropriately for the future. This is reinforced by our performance management framework, which is based on a balanced-scorecard approach, that looks at both short-term financial performance and foundations for the long-term strategic goals.
Lim: We have always placed great emphasis on cost management and operational efficiency, but our focus is also on long-term investments to ensure stable business growth. Following the root of simplicity, we streamline our work processes to enhance productivity and have introduced profit-sharing to encourage our colleagues. We also continually optimise our supply-chain efficiency and sales mix, and invest in technology improvements such as self-checkout systems, artificial intelligence (AI) weighing scales and electronic shelf labels. These measures enable us to generate returns for shareholders while ensuring the company’s long-term competitiveness.
Wee: UOB is guided by a long-term mindset. A hallmark of this is about striking the right balance – between growth and stability, innovation and risk, preserving our heritage and transforming for the future. We believe firmly in growing our own timber, augmented by talents from outside the bank. Our resilient financial performance is underpinned by our diversified growth drivers across our retail and wholesale businesses. UOB is one of the few banks globally with strong AA ratings.
As a prudent, long-term player, we have a strong balance sheet backed by healthy capital and liquidity positions. A key priority for us is to continue investing across our franchise – in all areas, including infrastructure and people – for the long term so that we deliver stable and balanced growth through market cycles.
Q: How do you approach communication with your stakeholders, and how has this contributed to your success?
Mok: Effective communication with our stakeholders, including employees, shareholders, and partners is key to our success. I believe that being transparent and honest is the best approach, and my management team operates on the same principle. We reinforce this with a consistent flow of updates, including e-mail updates and quarterly town hall meetings, to keep everyone informed of our goals, progress and achievements. This helps to build trust, foster collaboration, a sense of ownership and ultimately drive our shared success.
Lim: Communication is crucial to the success of our company. Our colleagues and Sheng Siong share a common interest: When colleagues feel well taken care of, they are more willing to work hard for the company, which in turn benefits our shareholders. We maintain transparency and practise timely internal and external communication to build trust with stakeholders. We have established open communication channels; besides staying connected with employees, we maintain information symmetry with shareholders through regular performance reports and updates. Additionally, the contact information of our operation team, including my mobile number, is posted at the entrance to each store so any customer or stakeholder can reach me. This open approach to communication helps us build strong relationships and ensures that stakeholders understand and support the company’s strategic direction.
Wee: I engage my team in an open and consultative manner. An individual can run faster, but together as a team, we can run further. I believe that an effective leader sometimes must deliberately step back to make room for people to grow. That is how new ideas emerge.
Just like strong roots providing foundation and anchor to a tree, our culture of care, growth and trust helps our UOB family stay grounded and shapes how we grow. Through deepening engagement with our employees, we want to empower our people to make a difference in their work.
We will continue to invest to create a conducive environment in which our people are engaged and energised. This ensures that we have the right culture and talent pool to deliver value to our customers and stakeholders.
Q: Could you highlight a significant breakthrough or innovation that your company achieved under your leadership, and how that has benefited both the company and its shareholders?
Mok: Our integration efforts with Worldwide Flight Services are going well, with best practices, solutions and systems being shared and adapted across the organisation. We committed as a team to work closely and collaboratively across all regions and functions. We are looking at how we can drive innovation in the services delivered to our customers, particularly on the back of our global network of stations, but this will just be the beginning. Innovation is driven by people and mindset – as we gel our teams to work better together, this will be a source of innovation for years to come.
Lim: Sheng Siong has always kept pace with digitalisation. We have a just-in-time inventory management system that optimises supply-chain efficiency. At the front line, we focus on reducing customers’ waiting time through hybrid self-checkout or self-checkout systems. AI weighing scales and electronic shelf labels are installed to lessen the workload of our colleagues. Additionally, we have expanded our online business to meet the growing needs of our customers. These innovations not only enhance customer experience, but also drive continuous growth for Sheng Siong.
Wee: Over the years, UOB has been innovating to stay competitive, and we have been early movers in some of the solutions and services we provide. Examples include setting up a foreign direct investment advisory in 2011 to help companies navigate the diverse Asean markets when they enter them. We also launched our digital bank UOB TMRW in Thailand in 2019 to offer personalised banking solutions to our customers.
In 2021, we acquired Citigroup’s consumer banking businesses in four Asean markets – Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. This transformational deal doubled our retail franchise in the four Asean markets and accelerated UOB’s growth in the region by five years.
This decisive move in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic helped grow our retail customer base to more than eight million today. Our focus now is on tapping synergies to cross-sell to our expanded customer base after the acquisition, so that we continue to deliver value to our shareholders.
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