Interview with Mr. Lim Chung Chun :IFAST CORPORATION PTE LTD

Business Profile: iFast Corporation is one of the largest unit trust distributor in Singapore. Their dual growth drivers from B2B and B2C business platforms have made it easy, efficient and informative for investors globally to make wise decisions on investments. They have recently expanded to Hong Kong and are seeking further expansion to Malaysia and India by the end of the year.

1. What is the nature of your business? Well we are essentially a distribution platform for unit trusts. There are 2 main parts to our business. Firstly, we act as a platform that supports various companies which are in the business of unit trust distribution and advisory. Most of them are Independent Financial Advisers (IFA) firms that use our platform to handle transactions as well as engage in a holistic range of services that allows them to operate in their business efficiently. Secondly, we provide online distribution of unit trusts. This is the B2C channel where we distribute unit trusts directly to investors via fundsupermart.com.

2. Can you remember your worst day in business or a time when you felt like giving up? What happened that made you feel that way and how did you triumph over it? There was not a point when I have ever felt like giving up. My belief is that it is important that that situation never exists. You must never accept the possibility of failure because if you give up mentally, that is one of the worst things that can happen to any business. The reality is that if you believe you cannot do it, then you probably will not succeed. But if you believe that you can, it remains to be proven whether you can. In our case, throughout the years through good and through bad times there has always been the belief that we will succeed and take off. The only question was when, how soon, what does it take and measures that they need to adopt to succeed.    

3. Can you share some of the lessons you learnt from overcoming your own business challenges that you think will help other businesses? You have to believe that your business will take off. If you believe it will fail, you probably will because all it takes is for the driver of the business to enter into a patch where they feel like giving up and then they will find that their business could take a bad turn and it might be very difficult to recover from it subsequently. Other lessons will be for example, in our case, we have been very consistent in the direction that we took. We generally take a medium to longer term approach in our thinking. We plan out where we need to head and move into that direction - through good and through bad times. That is how over the years we have differentiated ourselves from our competitors. Some companies actually will be very excited during good times. While during bad times they get demoralized and cut back on various activities that they do. That actually has a very long term cost to the business. On the other hand, we have been very consistent in our approach, be it SARS, Iraq War, we continue to push forward.   

4. What are some of your business values and what would you like to pass down to others, particularly the younger generation? Internally we actually have set our mission statement: To help investors around the world invest globally and profitably. To me that is one of the values that helps us believe that we are continually trying to help the end consumer achieve good returns on the money that they put in. This value is important with regard to our business. In the investment world you will find that you can have situations that in the short term, the objective of the business could conflict with the objective of the consumer. The objective of the business is to generally try to increase sale and profitability. So if you are in the unit trust business, generally you want to sell more. The objective of the consumer on the other hand is to achieve a good return especially in the long run. To us the challenge is matching the 2 objectives. The investment world is such that very often the easiest way to drive up sales could actually be ways that are not good for consumers. For example you sell products that are 'flavor of the month', which will probably do poorly for consumers in the long run but in the short term you find that it is actually the easiest thing to sell. These are values that may not actually be there in some financial institutions. The short term goal of achieving revenue and profitability overrides the long term principles that ought to be there. On our part we like to think longer term so that the objectives can be matched easily. We need not worry about month-to-month sales or quarterly sales. The products that we recommend are those that we believe are generally good for the long run. So if it is good for consumers in the long run, they come back again to us. This naturally grows the business in the long run. But if you take the short sighted approach of pushing sales over the quarter because it is easier it may actually hurt your business in the long run. This is a very important value that we embrace.   

5. With the changes in the market today, do you think it has become harder or easier to succeed in business? Why do you say so? When we say succeed I am referring to succeeding over time and not in 1 year because there are shifts in demand and supply which can affect the business. In view of that angle, I personally think that succeeding in this market today is the same. I do not think it has become harder. Ultimately, the fundamental economic rules still apply. To succeed in a business, you need to be among the better ones. You have got to be the top. Conditions will change but they way to succeed is to be better than your competitors. I do not think this fundamental rule has changed.  

6. What advice would you give young people who want to start their own business? Be mentally prepared to cope with the mental stress of not having regular income in the short term. Actually this is something that a lot of people find difficult. It is more psychological than financial meaning some people might have lots of money in the bank but they do not feel safe and psychologically they feel difficult. For example someone has $5 million in the bank but if he is not getting $250,000 in annual income they will feel poor, vulnerable and disheartened. If he always feels that way then it is very difficult to run a business properly. The amount of money is of course in some way a factor especially in startup companies. But I do not think that it is one of the ultimate determinant because we ourselves have been up against competitors with far more money than us. But it did not stop us from doing much better than them. So it is actually a mental challenge rather than the challenge of having more money at that point of time.

7. What would be the most important strategic management concept to you? (E.g. SWOT approach, Organizational approach) One of the important factors that has been our priority all these years is the ability to align the interests of as many stakeholders as possible - the shareholders, employees, suppliers and customers. Align these well and you will find that the ability of the business to grow will surprise you. All too often there are businesses out there spending on various strategies and schemes to pull the business together. But since there does not exist alignment of interests, the day to day tasks will seem to require huge effort and they may have to constantly pump in extra energy to do the tasks. For example, when it comes to employees it is a HR consideration. To me one of the key things is to have various company policies that will make the employees feel that they are part of the whole system and are excited to see the company grow. In some businesses you may find that the company can grow a lot but the employees may not necessarily feel excited about this growth because it does not concern their personal growth. That is a problem if we cannot get the two parties aligned together. Hence various policies will needs to be in place to make the employees feel motivated. The best way is to make them feel and believe that when the company does well long term, they will see tremendous personal growth as well. We have been sufficiently able to do so, that is why for me, the CEO, my job would be easier because I need not spend time giving pep talks. In practice they are willing to think long term for the company.  

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