Although around 10% of all Japanese students graduate from economics courses, somehow the proportion seems higher. After growing up in Okayama, western Japan, Hironori Ando joined their ranks at Kyoto Sangyo University. Ando says he wasn’t particularly interested in the field beforehand but began to find it intriguing as he learned more about it, especially the relationships between economics and aspects of human psychology.
Receiving job offers from a major property company and a regional bank, Ando chose the latter, the wonderfully named Tomato Bank from his home prefecture, setting himself on the path to a career in finance.
Winning an award from the company in only his second year — the first of many he would receive in his career — ironically helped convince Ando that he needed to broaden his professional horizons. A year later he started at Okasan Securities, from where he was dispatched to Singapore for a short stint with J.P. Morgan Asset Management as part of his training.
A broader perspective
“There I realised how wide the scope of the finance sector is,” recalls Ando, who also noticed some of the differences between Japanese corporate finance and more global firms. “It was much less hierarchical and people expressed their opinions more openly. In Japan, you’re mostly paying attention to your boss’s wishes rather than your customer’s wishes.”
But his experience there helped spark a change in Ando’s thinking and approach to work, convincing him that he could be bolder and not simply follow his managers’ ideas. After three years at Okasan, he moved to the wealth management division at SMBC in Osaka, where he spent a couple of years before in 2018 joining UBS, where he first connected with the SCCIJ.
Asked about whether changing jobs frequently wasn’t still frowned upon in corporate Japan, Ando replies with a laugh: “It does have a bad image. Not many people do it but I’d achieved good results so I could get away with it.”
One of the major attractions of wealth management for Ando has been the involvement in a broad scope of customers’ lives. “I get to talk to very successful people and have interesting conversations, which I learn a lot from…Sometimes they open up about matters or concerns that they don’t discuss with their partners. There’s a lot of trust.”
Changing the game
In 2019, UBS and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings announced a joint venture for their wealth management operations, resulting in the corporate culture becoming more traditionally Japanese and a handful of Ando’s colleagues reconsidering their future. The result was the establishment of Vaste Culture that year; business operations launched in 2022 with the aim of being a Swiss-inspired private bank that was a game-changer in the Japanese financial world.
Ando believes that financial institutions in Japan often don’t act with the best interests of their clients at heart, often failing to disclose information which would be useful to them. Along with addressing that imbalance, the firm is also focused on facilitating philanthropy by its clients, which 30 to 40% are currently engaged in, according to Ando.
“Many of our clients want to do something that has meaning, whether it be investing in ventures that are working on cancer treatments, providing meals for children or donating to a charity. We can help money to flow from those with it to those without. It’s sometimes the case in Japan that people want to make donations but don’t know where or how to do so effectively.”
Knowledge is power
Along with limited knowledge around charitable activities, even many successful Japanese people suffers from a relative lack of financial nous, suggests Ando. Although financial education has recently been introduced at primary schools, Ando says that the level of knowledge among adults can make it difficult for them to fully understand their portfolios and easier for them to get caught in financial or investment frauds.
Vaste Culture is steadily growing and now has 17 staff, half a dozen of whom are former UBS. Looking to the future, Ando would like to see the firm become the leader in its sector and have assets under management reach the 10 trillion-yen mark. The company has offices in both Osaka and Tokyo, and while Ando regularly travels to the capital, his home and heart remain firmly in the Kansai region.
Hinori Ando at a Halloween Event in Singapore.
Text: Gavin Blair for SCCIJ.
