Donald Soo

Donald Soo is a Hong Kong–based financial-services entrepreneur with 25–30 years of experience spanning banking, wealth management, portfolio management, private equity and ASEAN financial regulation across Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. He is a licensed adviser holding SFC and HKCIB licenses in Hong Kong and is ASIC-licensed in Australia to serve Australian private clients. He studied at the University of New England in Australia.

Earlier in his career he held management roles at the Bank of New Zealand (Australia), the National Australia Bank, and Professional Investment Advisory Services Pte Ltd (PIAS) in Singapore, where he is credited with growing funds under advice from zero to more than SG$1.2 billion by 2008. His hands-on fintech background predates the current wealthtech wave: he helped develop digital mortgage-automation processes for the Bank of New Zealand (1995–1997) and built the Aviva N-Link financial-planning software (2002), reportedly still in use in Australia.

He founded Orb Global Wealth Management in Hong Kong, which was later rebranded as Pyrmont Wealth Management. Pyrmont is a fully regulated firm holding SFC Type 4 and Type 9 licenses plus an insurance license from the Hong Kong Insurance Authority, offering life-centred financial planning (its "LifePlan"), investment management, insurance, pension planning, inheritance-tax/trust services and UK & Australian expatriate advice.

In 2017 Soo founded KoiZai Limited, a cross-border AdviceTech/WealthTech venture building a single cloud platform to modernise wealth management and financial planning across Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand. KoiZai went through the Cyberport Incubation Programme in Hong Kong (graduating in 2023). Soo is a frequent industry panellist and speaker (Hubbis, ETF Asia, Adviser Australia, Clearing/Settlement & Custody Asia) and has appeared on Channel NewsAsia's *Money Mind*.

• Invests and builds around fintech, WealthTech and AdviceTech — technology that modernises and digitises financial advice and wealth management, the domain of his own venture KoiZai.
• Strong cross-border APAC/ASEAN orientation: solutions designed to handle the distinct regulatory and client needs of Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand on a single platform.
• Backs early / seed-stage opportunities as an angel, favouring founders operating in or near his areas of deep operating expertise — regulated financial services, advisory technology and cross-border wealth.
• Values regulatory fluency and real industry pain points; his career thesis is that legacy advice and planning workflows in Asia and Australia are ripe for digital, compliance-aware automation.