Welcome to Risky Women Radio, the podcast that spotlights the bold, brilliant women leading change across risk, compliance, and governance. In an era where “uncertainty” has been upgraded from a buzzword to a permanent state of being, we sit down with the leaders who navigate the chaos so the rest of us can sleep at night.
In this episode, Zhiyun Nai, Managing Director at Protiviti, is joined by Jean Chung, Chief Compliance Officer for Hong Kong, Greater China, and North Asia at Standard Chartered Bank.
Jean is a veteran of the compliance world who has spent over two decades bridging the gap between policy and purpose. From setting international standards in Singapore to advising the Korea FIU on crypto assets, Jean has seen it all. She joins us to discuss the “80/20 rule” of global regulation, why AI might actually make her team’s lives better (rather than just replacing them), and how the definition of leadership has evolved from “don’t be too soft” to “empathy is your superpower”.
SHOWNOTES
2:19 – The Global Commonality Myth
5:48 – AI as the Ultimate Intern
13:08 – Innovation vs. The Deepfake Arms Race
23:31 – The Evolution of “Soft” Leadership
26:15 – Taking the Leap of Faith
Jean Chung is the Chief Compliance Officer for Hong Kong and GCNA at Standard Chartered Bank. Her career spans more than 20 years, including a decade at KPMG advising global banks on audit and governance. Since joining Standard Chartered, she has served as the Money Laundering Reporting Officer in South Korea and Head of Financial Crime in Singapore.
Sponsor
Protiviti is a global consulting firm that uses technology, innovation, data and analytics to create unique solutions that transform the field of risk management and solve industry wide problems.
TRANSCRIPT
Kimberley Cole 0:01
This is Risky Women Radio, a show that connects, celebrates and champions women in risk regulation and compliance. We’re here to share the insights on the biggest issues in our industry and hear inspiring journeys from our global members. Sign up to our newsletter at riskywomen.org. I’m Kimberley Cole, your Chief Risky Woman.
Zhiyun Nai 0:22
Welcome to Risky Woman, the podcast where we spotlight bold, brilliant women leading change across risk, compliance and governance. I am Zhiyun, Managing Director of Protiviti. Today, we are joined by someone whose career truly embodies resilience, global perspective and leadership in complex environments. Jean Chung, Managing Director and Chief Compliance Officer for Hong Kong, Greater China and North Asia at Standard Chartered Bank. Jean’s professional journey spends more than two decades across the financial services sector before joining Standard Chartered she spent over a decade with KPMG, where she advised some of the world’s largest banks on audit compliance and governance matters across Korea, Japan and Singapore. Jean joined Standard Chartered nearly a decade ago and has since held a series of senior leadership roles, including money laundering reporting officer in South Korea and Head of Financial Crime in Singapore. Her work bridges, policy people and purpose, ensuring that Standard Chartered term maintains integrity while enabling growth in some of the most dynamic financial markets in the world. Yeah. So today, we’ll explore Jean’s remarkable journey, how she navigated the leap from advisory to banking leadership, the pivotal moments that shaped her career and her advice for women aspiring to lead it in recent compliance. Jean, welcome to Risky Women. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you with us.
Jean Chung 1:47
Thank you so much for your very kind introduction Zhiyun and happy to be here.
Zhiyun Nai 1:52
Thank you for spending time with us. So maybe I’ll start with the most important question today, you’ve built an impressive career in compliance with your current role, especially in Standard Chartered as Chief Compliance Officer for Hong Kong, Greater China and North Asia. Looking back, what experiences in Hong Kong, Singapore and the wider Asia, all the global markets most shape the way you approach risk today?
Jean Chung 2:19
That’s a very good question, and very pertinent question. And I really thought about this, this topic for a long time. One, we operate in a very globalised environment, and a lot of peers and colleagues in this realm, we realised that the challenges we face are common, and also the rules by which we have to operate are getting standardised. And I worked in as you mentioned, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Tokyo, and also a bit in Germany. And what I realised was there are more commonality than difference. Because when you go and talk to a colleague in a country, they usually start from saying how their country is different, different from the regulatory expectation, different from the market condition, different from what clients expect of us, etc. But then you really realise there are more commonality than difference, and to pinpoint where I really learned in rather hard way was when I was working in Singapore, in at Standard Chartered Bank in my group capacity, when I was setting standards for our client due diligence requirements, we had to go through a set of regulatory requirements in multiple jurisdictions. And my then role was to identify common standards. I would call it minimum standards, or international standards that we had to follow. And we all often talk about 80/20 rule, right? 80% common, 20% difference. I mean, I cannot be that precise where there’s 80% but it is, there are more commonalities than we think. So um learning through that with my own experience, hands on experience, and also working with many colleagues in different countries and interacting with customers, clients, having this mindset that that we can actually operate in more common ground, really helped, because what client expect of us, what regulators expect of us, and also being in the control function, what our business colleagues expect of us are quite similar, so I think I’ll probably start from there.
Zhiyun Nai 5:09
That’s interesting to hear, and I think very true, because in in today’s world where we we want to leverage AI, if every country is different, it’s going to be very hard. So leading to my second question, right as you manage financial crime worries in fast moving markets like you’re in now, artificial intelligence is transforming how financial institutions detect and prevent money laundering scams, and how do you see AI shaping AML practices? What opportunities or challenges does it bring for your compliance team?
Jean Chung 5:48
Let me rephrase a bit of your question there. I think we have an expectation that artificial intelligence will bring the change right? We have that expectation because not many of our peers have actually realised or fully implemented the promise that artificial intelligence is expected to bring. We are in the journey right now together right. Well, if you look at what our colleagues do in financial crime, whether it’s the operational capacity or investigative capacity, a lot of time is spent actually on data aggregation. Right? We need to look at all the transactions of a customer, and we need to also look understand customer’s overall profile, etc. If you look at my people, my team, they access multiple systems, extract the data and bring the data into certain formats so that they can then start understanding of the profile. What I think the immediate benefit we can get from artificial intelligence, sorry, is we can rely on AI to help with a data aggregation. I think that’s low hanging fruit. We are still going through the journey to implement artificial intelligence, so I haven’t actually seen the benefit of it, but based on many different proof of concepts that a lot of vendors have shown us, I think that’s something that we can immediately benefit. And from that perspective, our people can then focus on actual investigation, right? If, let’s say, in any typical investigative process, we have turnaround time, and we need to file STR as soon as we realise that this is suspicious, we have that set time. If AI can really help with data aggregation, so the entire turnaround time that we have can be actually spent on investigations, and I think it will really help our people, right? And there are a lot of also, I would say, negative view on artificial intelligence from job security, and people are concerned, and it’s not something that you hear in chatters, in YouTube and whatnot. Is actually real, and it’s happening within my team also. And I think what I would rather can do change the subject is, what if all the work that you’re doing two to three hours a day, four or five hours a day, aggregating the data you can actually spend on understanding the transaction, understanding the customer. Would that be better hours and minutes spent? So I think, I think there’s a different, different ways to really understand what AI would bring, and that will also help understand new typologies coming through. Because when you are just very used to looking at certain set of typologies, right, you may miss new typologies or something that’s kind of different because you’re so, you know, tied to that turnaround time, and you have to just, just push through the trend, push through the cases. So I think, I think it will bring a lot of opportunities for us and the team.
Zhiyun Nai 9:40
Thanks, Jean, you mentioned about the team using data aggregation, especially in the monitoring space. Do you see it helping to help the team stay ahead of emerging risks, rather than, you know, simply reacting to new rules that regulatory papers issue?
Jean Chung 9:58
Um. I do have high expectation that it will help. Again, we are still in the journey of implementing artificial intelligence in our surveillance program, so I cannot say as a fact that it has helped, but I do think so, because we, our people have more we will have more time to really go through deep dive the transaction patterns and how certain transaction patterns appear in certain profile of customers. And probably that’s where we will be able to see some new patterns and new potential typologies that’s emerging. Because, again, when, when we are spending more time on data aggregation and spending more time on on that front, I would say, then we don’t have enough time to really into integrate the data in front of us, so so I think it will help. And the thing is, there are a lot of different trends appearing with, again, I would say artificial intelligence. Criminals are very creative, so they they used to fake technology to even change their facial features right, and they can even deep fake all the supporting documents that they submit to us. And this is not just happening to our bank, it just happens across all the industry, across the board, and this is the regulators, law enforcement agencies and banking sector, as well as non bank financial institutions, because also NBFIs are huge component of our industry. We are learning this together. So what I see is we can spend more time interacting with our peers, interacting with our law enforcement agencies, because they also see more trends, because there are actual victims out there, right? So, so I think, I think it will just free us to have more opportunity to understand our customers, understand our transactions.
Zhiyun Nai 12:28
Thanks, Jean. And I think in fast moving Asian markets, I I hear you like we want to get ahead of the curve. We want to use data, we want to use technology. But sometimes there’s always a fine balance there, right? So I also see in my clients, often there’s tension between operational agility and regulatory requirement. How do you strike the balance without compromising either? And you know, this is often a conversation you have with the business you know, how do we make sure that there is a fine balance?
Jean Chung 13:08
A very good question, and this is the topic that we speak about in any industry gatherings, and also our conversations with our regulators and law enforcement agencies, actually. But let me just add another vector to it, not only operational resilience, agility and regulatory requirements or expectation, but also Asia is leading the way when it comes to innovation, right? Whether it’s a digital asset, whether there’s all the tokenisation and whatnot, a stable coin and whatnot, right? So this is where we I personally think that we need to go back to the basics, because in especially in the innovative space from for digital assets, stable coin, whatnot, regulatory framework is fast developing. At Standard Chartered bank is we’re very proud that we are one of you international financial institutions that are kind of leading the way in digital access space and and believe me, it has not been easy, and it’s not easy still, because we have to work with regulators when they are coming with the regulatory framework. We also need to work with our business, because we need to kind of anticipate what risk this new technology or new ways of banking will bring to our customers and our our institution. So there are a lot of moving parts, and when we do that, the last thing we think about is putting millions of people in the investigations and transaction monitoring and transaction screening, but more how we can utilise technology to monitor our transaction and anticipate what risk this new technology or new products will bring so so this is, I don’t think we have easy answer to that, but this is where true collaboration with business, true collaboration with industry peers and especially regulators, come really, really important, and the more and what we also think is also collaboration, really close collaboration law enforcement agencies, because they see criminal network firsthand, and they see that first, right so that industry, that public private partnership becomes really important. So gone are the days that we as a one institution, we just like, look at our transaction, look at our customers. We just need to collaborate more. And you’ll see that that in any of any industry forums that you go to in Asia, and not just Asia around the world, this public private partnership, private private partnership, and even within the public regulators and law enforcement agencies, partnership is top of everyone’s mind, because we just need to work together, because the risk that we are looking at, or we are facing, is cross border and transnational, if you know what I mean, right.
Kimberley Cole 16:35
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Zhiyun Nai 16:51
Interesting you brought out about cross border. Sitting in your position, you see some of the most challenging environments, right challenging and complex regions. So what strategies and frameworks have you found most effective in managing compliance and risk across all these jurisdictions that you manage with their very differing regulator stands? How do you manage this?
Jean Chung 17:20
I think I’ll go back to our very initial conversation about what I learned throughout working in different markets in different capacity. Commonality. There are more common areas than difference. Of course, clients behave differently. Our we do have a different set of products we offer in different jurisdictions and whatnot, but, but in cross border, right? our customers trade between different countries. They import material, they export their products to all different countries, right? And when they make payments, is from their treasury centre. They receive payments from their customers. They utilise their treasury centre in Singapore as an example. And then they, they, they repatriate their revenues, etc, across different countries. So again, how we really focus supporting our customers in cross border transactions and their cross border business, we just go back to basics. What’s the feature our of our products? What are our customers profiles, and what’s their risk appetite, what’s our risk appetite? It’s always going back to that, that basics of how we identify risk, how we manage our risk, and also different regulatory requirements, yes, indeed, and there are more sticky jurisdictions than others. But having said that, again, fundamentally, how we treat our customers fairly right and whether certain products are suitable for our customers, whether this set of products are best for their business, I would say strategy. I think going back to basics is what I would say, that basic to supporting this cross border environment and again, having this understanding that the regulatory expectations are, that there are more commonality in regulatory expectations. They want to make sure that we offer the right product to our customers, and we understand our customer profile, we understand the risks that they bring to the system. And what controls we need to have, I think that that’s that’s probably more common than different across yeah all these across all these jurisdictions.
Zhiyun Nai 20:17
Thanks, Jean. Do you also apply this concept to how you manage the different teams in the different jurisdiction? Do you encourage them to share common typologies they see in their country, or knowledge share about what they see with their regulator for example?
Jean Chung 20:34
Oh, definitely, definitely. At we Standard Chartered Bank we operate in 50+ jurisdictions, and of course of those, we have a main financial hubs, as with all other finance global institutions. We operate in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Dubai, London, New York, Frankfurt, you name it, we’re all there, like those financial hubs, right? And the and also India, of course, sorry about that. When we hear, I mean when I share the conversation I had with HKMA, right what and my colleagues share their conversation with their respective regulators, we see more common themes that regulators are interested about, and of course, financial Crime is top of everyone’s mind, especially fraud and scam, because it’s really impacting a lot of people, right? A lot of people so, and also sustainability, because we have a common goal as international community. And so there are certain topics that we see as common. Operational resiliency, because we just went through covid and the world just went stand still, and we had to operate in that that that environment, that operational resiliency, is also common topic, so and, and you’ll see that there’s, again, more common topics that regulators share with us then, then I would say different topics. And sharing that is very beneficial, because even when I am not currently focused on certain areas, when my colleagues in other countries share what they’re currently focused on, I will then anticipate, I can anticipate what will be the next topic that we’ll discuss. And also, not just anticipating what the HKMA would talk to us, we can also share that with regulators that in certain countries, they want to know about what what we are doing in this type of topics, and we do share, and that’s also well received by our regulators.
Zhiyun Nai 23:12
I see thanks Jean. So as a woman at the helm of compliance, what unique challenges have you faced in leadership and how have you navigated them? In your perspective, what mindset or capabilities are absolutely critical for success of women in this field?
Jean Chung 23:31
You know what? When you first sent me this set of questions, this one was something that I really thought about, I don’t know whether you realised, but I personally experienced the evolution of the definition of leadership, right? Of course, any organisation these days, we really emphasise the leadership, and we have a lot of sessions where we bring all the senior colleagues together to challenge each other and share their leadership, experience, their challenge, etc. When about a decade ago or so, when my boss shared his feedback with me about my leadership, he mentioned that Jean you you are too soft, you don’t give direct feedback. You need to work on giving direct feedback, whether it’s positive negative. Positive feedback, you’re good, but negative feedback, I think you need to work on that, right? I’m still working on it. I’m still working on it, because I’m not perfect, but the feedback that I got then um compared to now it has, it has changed. I think, I think it has evolved. Now we value more sympathetic and I would say empathy in leaders, right? Even when you have some constructive feedback you want to share with your people. You don’t want to say Jean you didn’t do ABC right. Need to do that right, but we want to understand what circumstance led to that type of decision or that type of behaviour, so that we can then think about how to improve that right? That that having that empathy, having that conversation, was once understood as being too soft, but now that’s what I believe, at least in our organisation, that’s what we expect of leaders. So that has evolved, and that element is where women are very good at. We tend to understand why certain why are people spoke about, why our people behave that way, what motivated their certain decision making. So it’s more of understanding and having that empathy to to know what prompt them to certain behaviour. I think that that has helped. It was once a bit of a improvement point from my perspective, but now the same aspect is given as my as a positive feedback from my now boss, right? So, so I think this helped throughout my career, and at the same time, another element is we tend to be really focusing on whether we are ready to take on a new role. I mean, you heard about this right when we’re 80% there or 90% there, because I’m not there yet 10% I’m still lagging that 10% lacking that 10% that I would say, Okay, I’ll do it next time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I when I go through my career progression the past two plus decades, I do think that I had a leap of faith. I did. I do think that I say I’ll try it, even though I don’t have that experience yet, I’ll try it. I’ll have a steep learning curve, I’ll try it. And actually I did that many, many times. But what I also learned and also learning at the same time is when you think that opportunity that you kind of took, or you took the risk of doing or you took the risk of doing a different role when you think that it’s not something that you can really excel. There are two, three ways to do it. One, you just really double down and you really work on it right. Two, when, when it’s time for you to really reflect, and there’s other opportunities that you can also contribute more. I think that’s when you need to be brave enough to say, okay, you know what? I tried it. I gave my best, best effort. But sometimes it doesn’t work and you move on. I think there has to be that, I think bravery, sometimes you have to reflect whether you are good or not, whatnot. But I think that is also important. I don’t know whether I make sense because a lot of things are going through my mind while I’m responding to your questions.
Zhiyun Nai 29:03
You, I certainly agree to that right, the having that courage to just give it a shot, give it a try. If it doesn’t work, do it again. Thank you, Jean. Thank you so much for the insights today. I think we really learned a great deal. And if we have one last question, the time for one last question before we wrap this interview, what do you see as your top priority for the year ahead?
Jean Chung 29:35
Very good question. We are going through a massive transformation as an organisation as at Standard Chartered compliance is called CFCR compliance, financial crime and conduct risk. So so we see these as a more of a risk lens, but as an organisation we’re going through really foundational transformation. One, because artificial intelligence right? And two, also, as everyone is experiencing together, there are a lot of cost pressure given current economic environment. So going to your earlier question about how we balance that, and this year is that year where we have to really focus on that transformation. At the same time we need to support our business growth. And this year, I do expect more uncertainties than ever. A lot of things are going on. When, when I had this question early last year, at the start of last year, I said uncertainty, right? But now the uncertainty is amplified more than ever, whether it’s a geopolitical uncertainty, whether the uncertainty that is artificial intelligence will bring about. So my my focus will be going back to basics, working with our team, and focus on what we can benefit from this transformation through and we will focus on empowering my team with technology. My team has to be enabled by technology to do their job right, and focus on working with our business, because our business also has a lot of pressure to deliver this year, and with that, we’ll also be pressured to make sure that we have a proper risk management framework, and we are there to partner with the business, and also our regulators are very keen how we navigate through this complexity. So yeah, that’ll be my focus.
Zhiyun Nai 32:02
Sounds like an exciting year ahead. Thank you Jean again for your time today, and thank you everyone for tuning in to Risky Women.
Kimberley Cole 32:10
Thank you for listening to this episode of Risky Women Radio, be part of the ongoing conversation and learn more about our events and other programs at riskywomen.org