kopi-C with the CEO of ZICO Holdings: From law firm network to financial services platform

Thirty years is a long time to watch a company change. 

Datuk Kelvin Ng Hock Heng is the Group CEO of ZICO Holdings, an SGX-listed professional services firm with operations across ASEAN. And his story with the company began in 1995, when he just joined Zaid Ibrahim & Co. It was then a Malaysian law firm focused on building a regional footprint that would eventually turn into the ZICO Law network, with a presence across all ten ASEAN countries. 

Today, as Group CEO, he leads a company that looks almost nothing like it did thirty years ago.

The law firms are largely gone, and in their place: a trust business managing nearly S$14 billion in assets, a licensed capital markets arm sponsoring IPOs, a licensed asset management outfit, a Shariah advisory practice, and a growing model for deploying fractional legal talent.

"I continue to be energised," he says, when asked what it is like to have spent three decades with the organisation. 

"I’ve evolved. I was a lawyer when I joined. Now, after 30 years, I no longer have a practising certificate, and I no longer call myself a lawyer. I now focus on change management and financial services. It makes for quite a different animal."

Low margins, high overhead

For much of ZICO Holdings' time as a listed company — its IPO was in 2014, and won the Financial Times' most innovative deal of the year for its structure — it was largely in the business of providing support services to law firms. 

In layman’s terms, this meant accounting, HR, IT, and marketing, the back-end infrastructure that kept operations running across 18 cities in ten countries. 

This was steady work. But it was also, as Datuk Ng puts it plainly, low-value work.

"The margins were low. We were also providing the same type of services that anybody else could come in and provide," he says candidly.

Eventually, when KPMG approached them to absorb much of the ZICOlaw network in 2022, Datuk Ng saw an exit ramp. 

More importantly, it freed management bandwidth that had been consumed by servicing the firms.

By the time Datuk Ng formally took over as Group CEO in May 2023, the direction was clear. 

"I decided that we should stop doing the law firm support work, and move on to financial services," he says. 

"We already had the licences. We were already in the market for trust, capital markets, and asset management. But there wasn't a focus — we were too busy servicing the law firms."

Datuk Ng adds that these licenses are not easily obtained from regulatory bodies like the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the SGX, hence, it also determines their competitive moat. 

Five businesses, one ecosystem

ZICO Trust (S) Ltd, the Group's Singapore-incorporated trust company, started from a team of two people and now employs almost 30. Its assets under management have grown to nearly S$14 billion under the strong leadership of its CEO, Jamil Mohamed. 

Datuk Ng attributes this to the nature of trust relationships themselves. 

"The trust business is a very sticky one," he says. "If someone has a family trust with you, they usually stay with you." 

Today, it has a client base that extends across Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand.

The capital markets arm, ZICO Capital, has also found its footing through Nathaniel Tan, its present CEO. As a licensed full sponsor and accredited issue manager on SGX Catalist—one of only a handful in Singapore—it acted as issue manager and placement agent for two IPOs in 2025 and currently has four mandates in the pipeline. 

"That said, we are very careful about which clients we take on," emphasises Datuk Ng. 

"We conduct proper due diligence. Certain organisations are not ready, to be quite honest, and for a few of them, their smaller profits or limited growth headroom do not justify listing, because of compliance costs." 

The sponsor relationship, he notes, is a long-term one: "We want companies that grow, that continue to do corporate exercises, that perhaps migrate to the main board."

A third business, ZICO Insource, represents the Group's answer to what legal services might look like without the fixed cost structure of a traditional firm. Rather than employing full-time lawyers, it maintains a large pool of lawyers who can be deployed to clients on demand. 

"If a company has six lawyers who are going on maternity and they want someone well-versed in their industry that can provide cover," Datuk Ng explains, "we provide the six lawyers at attractive rates and with a seamless transition. That’s because we don't pay for unnecessary overheads." 

The model has since been replicated in Thailand and, as of two months ago, Vietnam, by Chan May May, another former lawyer who manages its business and expansion.

The fourth is Shariah-compliant financial services, which is also where Datuk Ng sees some of the most immediate opportunity. 

ZICO's Shariah advisory subsidiary has long existed in Malaysia, but it is only now being brought into sharper focus. The catalyst, as Datuk Ng describes it, is a combination of geopolitics and positioning. Instability in the Middle East has prompted Islamic funds to look for alternative jurisdictions.

"Singapore is seen as a very financially and politically stable place," he says, "but it is not well known from an Islamic finance perspective. That's why we see this as a niche market." 

Datuk Ng mentions that Dr. Aida Othman, the CEO of ZICO Shariah in Malaysia, is one of the world's top Shariah advisors. She works alongside the Group's new CEO of the Group’s fifth business, ZICO Asset Management — Pg Aziz bin Pg Hj Ali Hassan, who assumed the role in January 2026.

"Together, we have selected the right talent to drive our transformation into a platform for regulated capital, trust, assets and wealth management. We bring this expertise from Malaysia, and coupled with Singapore's political stability and brand name, we aspire to be the ‘go-to’ professional services provider in the ASEAN region."

Fewer countries, more conviction

Datuk Ng shares that previously, ZICO counted its ASEAN footprint as a point of pride: having a presence in every single ASEAN country.

Today, he takes a dramatically different perspective. 

"With financial services, you don't need all ten countries," he points out. 

He names three growth markets beyond Singapore and Malaysia: Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

"These three countries have 450 million people. Vietnam alone, with 100 million people of which over 50 percent are under 35—there is a real hunger for success."

His perspective is shaped by years of actually navigating those markets, where he has opened offices and, built law firm networks, and in the process, learnt what makes each country distinct from its neighbours. 

"Many people think every Asian country is the same. Even Asians think that," he says. "It's not. Each is distinctly different depending on their history."

The harder problem

Bringing all of this together is an AI transformation that Datuk Ng describes as a phased, multi-year investment. 

The first phase—which the Group plans to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026—centres on what he calls "business convergence": using AI agents to identify cross-selling opportunities across ZICO's separate business units. 

"We have a great ecosystem," he says, "and we want to make sure our clients benefit from every single aspect of it." 

Subsequent phases will tackle back-office efficiency and compliance automation, particularly due diligence and risk flagging, which are requirements across all of the Group's regulated activities.

However, the harder problem, he concedes, is not technology. It is culture.

ZICO's workforce largely originated from the law firm support structure, and many are still adjusting to the identity shift from professional services support to regulated financial services. 

"You can have the greatest strategy in the world. With zero execution, it remains a strategy," he points out.

His approach to this is practical. Alongside the annual leadership strategy session (now in its third year), he has introduced a talent strategy involving a group he calls the Hunters: younger, middle management staff who he describes as hungry for progress and success.   

The idea is to arm them with tools, direction, and cross-selling incentives and see what they do with it. 

"You arm them," he says, "and they will hunt."

Datuk Ng’s varied career background, built over three decades, has contributed to his drive: from selling hi-fis and refrigerators as a student, to practising tax at KPMG and Deloitte, to building a law firm network across ten countries, to leading a listed company through multiple reinventions. 

"Every single thing I've learnt along the way helps," he says. "I've seen what works and what doesn't work — from my clients, from the firms I've worked with, and from observing how things evolve."

Part of what that cross-disciplinary journey gives him, he suggests, is a clarity about what different professional formations actually produce. 

"A lawyer doesn't care about shareholders' value. They just want to know what's right and wrong," he says. 

"Similarly, when you come from an accounting background, you always figure out ways to enhance revenue, because with expenses there's only so much you can cut."

“At the end of the day, what matters most is a personal drive to relentlessly innovate, add value for clients, and continue to find ways to execute faster, better and smarter.” 

Three decades of reinvention — both Datuk Ng and the company's — have culminated in this moment. Whether the next chapter delivers on it is, as he might say, a matter of execution.

About Zico Holdings

ZICO is a regulated Capital, Trusts, Assets and Wealth Management platform operating across ASEAN.  Listed on the Catalist Board of the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited (“SGX-ST”) since 11 November 2014, the Group serves as Trusted Advisors to family offices, institutional investors, corporations, and high-net-worth individuals with transparent, well-governed solutions across Singapore, Malaysia and the wider region. ZICO leverages its regional capabilities and regulatory expertise to help clients structure, grow and preserve capital across Southeast Asia.

About kopi-C: the Company brew

kopi-C is a regular column by SGX Research in collaboration with Beansprout (https://growbeansprout.com), Singapore’s trusted investment intelligence platform which helps everyday investors build the knowledge and confidence to make decisions that matter. kopi-C features C-level executives of leading companies listed on SGX. These interviews are profiles of senior management aimed at helping investors better understand the individuals who run these corporations.