Ant Group names regional GM for Southeast Asia

Ant Group has appointed Jia Hang as regional GM for Southeast Asia. The newly created role extends Ant Group’s ongoing efforts to strengthen its talent and capability building in the region and its commitment to better support individuals and local and regional businesses, especially SMEs to ride the wave of the digital economy.

Based in Singapore, Ant Group's regional headquarters for Southeast Asia, Hang has more than 20 years of experience in payments and financial technology. He has played a number of important roles in Ant Group’s international operations since 2015. His most recent responsibilities include overseeing the global operation of WorldFirst and leading the payments solution team to support global and regional eCommerce marketplaces.

Hang said that amidst a stronger push for businesses to recover and thrive by advancing digitally to innovate for the future, the company must be right at where its customers are. "Through continuous and close collaborations with both public and private sectors in the region, we are dedicated to helping local businesses succeed with our talents, know-how and digital capabilities," he added.

He will also support the 10x1000 Tech for Inclusion programme as part of Ant's efforts to nurture local tech talents. Ant Group is the owner and operator of Alipay. It also introduced Alipay+, which provides global cross-border mobile payments and marketing solutions that connect merchant partners, especially small and medium-sized businesses, with mobile payments and other payment methods.

Ant reportedly saw profits rise by about 21% in the three months to September, according to Bloomberg in February this year. The results were despite a regulatory overhaul in China as part of the government's efforts to rein in the country's tech companies. Ant contributed US$912 million to Alibaba Group's holdings earnings, Bloomberg said.

That same month, Bloomberg also reported that the Chinese government is working on a new round of checks on Ant as state-owned firms and banks are required to examine financial exposure they had to the group. Chinese authorities also instructed institutions to "closely examine all exposure they had to Ant, its subsidiaries and even its shareholders up to January". Meanwhile, the Chinese government was reported to be creating a separate app for Alipay's loans business last year and instructed Ant to separate its two lending units from its main business.

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