Live and learn: Wealth managers Anthonia Hui and Leonardo Drago on the experiences that guide their wealth management and philanthropy

Hui started working as a secretary in a bank at age 21. She later became a junior banker and moved into private banking. “I had no idea what private banking was back then and didn’t know how to start. But I went to a good school and one of my classmates came from a wealthy family. She introduced me to David Tang, the founder of [luxury fashion brand] Shanghai Tang,” she shares. “David was a man with a big heart. He said, ‘Anthonia, print a lot of business cards and get yourself a few nice dresses. From now on, whenever I’m invited to a cocktail party or a ball, you’ll be coming along with me.’”

Through Tang, Hui managed to connect with the wealthy community. “But I realised that it might not be the right thing to do, meeting people with an agenda and thinking that you’ll get their bank account,” Hui shares. “So I always took an interest in getting to know them. I met a lot of interesting people, and started building relationships and trust with them—and this set the foundation for my career.”

In comparison, Drago describes his growing‑up years as “much more simple and straightforward”. Born in Hong Kong, he grew up in Italy before returning to attend high school, and then going to the US for university. “There was a recession when I graduated and it was difficult to find a job. So I took my first job in a casino in Africa, where I spent a year, before getting a job [at a leading French private bank] in Hong Kong—and that was where I met Anthonia,” he says. While Drago grew up relatively comfortable, his father was an orphan of the Second World War who put himself through school before setting up a business in Hong Kong. And because he grew up poor, he was careful with money and conscious about teaching his only son its value.

Even though his salary at the bank was not enough to pay rent for the apartment he shared with two others, Drago never asked for help. Instead, he worked as a part‑time personal trainer at a gym. One of his flatmates was the bank’s head of credit and risk, and the credit risk manager for Hui’s clients.

As he tells it, “One day, I bumped into Anthonia in the lift. I won’t share with you the exact words, but I said, ‘You need to go to the gym.’” Hui was taken aback, but she thought about how she had been working too hard and was neither eating healthy nor exercising regularly. “So I started training her at the gym at 7am, three times a week,” Drago recalls. “She became my most successful client in terms of losing weight and being healthy. After that, all the women in the bank wanted to hire me as their personal trainer, but none of them were as dedicated as Anthonia.”

Power moves

The recession in the early noughties, just after the pair moved to Singapore, offered a turning point in their careers down the road. “My colleagues at the bank were upset about their bonuses—and so was I. But then someone recommended that I read a silly‑sounding book titled The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Basically, the idea is to reset your expectations so you’ll never be unhappy,” says Drago. “I told Anthonia that the way the wealth management industry is in Asia, we can only do well for our clients if we started our own business, which was what we did in 2007.”

Drago has his investor father to thank for his business acumen. When he was in high school, instead of giving him pocket money, his father set up a small investment portfolio for him with HK$10,000 (about S$1,700).  “I could spend the profit, but not the capital,” he explains. “For the first seven months, I doubled the money, which I thought was my skill, but it was down to luck. Those in finance would know about the Black Monday of 1987, when stocks dropped 20 per cent to 30 per cent in one day, so my portfolio was wiped out. I was so scared to tell my father. Of course, he already knew, but I didn’t know that. When I finally mustered the courage to tell him, he said it was better that I learnt this lesson with $10,000 rather than $10 million. I’ll never forget that.”

Hui notes that this set Drago’s perspectives on the finance industry. “Leo has no illusions; [he knows] that the market can be cruel and nobody can precisely predict [what will happen],” she says. “When you have the fiduciary duty to manage other people’s wealth, it’s primarily meeting what the clients can take in terms of risk. If the client is taking too much risk, we’re always the first to stop them. If they choose not to listen to us, we’d rather be honest and tell them that, ‘We can’t look after you, you’re better off somewhere else.’ This is how we manage our clients’ wealth because we feel responsible and accountable not just for the person, but for their family as well.”

When it comes to wealth creation, the pair believe that having a purpose is important. “When you don’t have an anchor of a purpose, or why you’re doing what you’re doing, it can impact your mental state, your relationship with your family and the community,” Hui says. “Other than looking at our clients, we also have to look at ourselves. We can’t be telling people to do one thing but we walk a different path.” Hui started looking into charities and causes, and connecting with people who are doing philanthropic work.

One of them is Laurence Lien. “At that time, he had just founded the Asia Philanthropy Circle, [a Singapore‑based network of philanthropists across 13 markets in Asia], and I also met one of his co‑founders [and philanthropist] Stanley Tan. They taught me so much about philanthropy,” Hui shares. “Most importantly, it was Stanley who shared that philanthropy is not only about giving money; it’s understanding what people need, and how we can help them make a better and sustainable living by themselves.”

It was then, Hui shares, that she and Drago “started considering our own purpose of wealth, our relationship with money, and looked into supporting the philanthropic causes that speak to us”. One of them is homegrown theatre company Wild Rice. “I knew Glen [Goei, its co-artistic director,] when I was working in London, and I also met Ivan [Heng, its founding artistic director],” Hui says. “What I really enjoy about [its] shows is that they use humour to address social issues that people tend to not speak about openly. To me, this is important for enriching our soul, especially as city people, we’re running around and don’t give ourselves the time to sit down and reflect.” That was the start of the couple’s journey in philanthropy.

Through the Asia Philanthropy Circle platform, they connected with other philanthropists who are doing meaningful work. “I realised then that I didn’t know how to give and where to start, but we decided to look at the human life cycle,” Hui says. “I was born malnourished, so children’s nutrition is important to me. We started supporting the 1000 Days Fund, which is based in Indonesia, and seeks to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes for poor and marginalised [local] communities.”

From there, they started going full circle, advocating for causes in Singapore and throughout Asia, from education to mental health, assisted living and dementia care and, in recent years, eliminating human trafficking. Hui wants to spend more time “to devise a programme that leverages those who are already doing good work [in a particular field], and collaborating together to try to move the needle and make a bigger impact”.

She is also a board member of the Asia Community Foundation, a grant‑making platform by philanthropists for philanthropists that was founded by Lien, Tan and philanthropist Francesco Caruso in 2023. The donor‑advised fund and community foundation seeks to be a trusted partner for purposeful philanthropy in Asia. It helps donors create meaningful impact through an effective, efficient and safe platform, addressing the growing needs and demands for cross‑border giving among donors in Singapore. Drago, meanwhile, frequently lectures at higher learning institutions in Asia and Europe, including Singapore’s Wealth Management Institute.

“Between Leo and I, we have one value system and to be truly effective in what we do, we need to have compatibility with our clients. We work with clients who share the same values and ethos in terms of investing, or life in general,” Hui says. “When we go through this journey of discovery for ourselves, we share the same kind of reflection with our clients. You can enjoy the wealth you’ve created for yourself and your family, but anything in excess doesn’t belong to you. You’re the steward of that wealth—and you have to do something with it.”

In addition to managing their clients’ investments, the wealth managers also help them structure their philanthropic journeys “in such a way that it doesn’t compromise their lifestyle and their family’s best interests”, Hui shares. “We give them the road map— and once they have that information, it’s actually an easy decision.”

Invested in the future

It was with an eye on the future that Hui and Drago decided to sell their business. Drago shares: “One of our key clients in Hong Kong said, ‘You’re effectively a two‑person outfit. If something happens to you, then your business can’t continue.’ If you look at the long‑term—and I think every entrepreneur comes to that point—many people will say, ‘Oh, my children will take over.’ But we don’t have children, [and] that may not always be the best way either. We’ve tried grooming people internally, but it’s difficult. So with that client’s words in mind, we needed a succession plan, because people will not give you all of their money to manage because they’ll always wonder what can potentially happen to you unexpectedly.” Hui adds: “I feel obliged to provide continuity for our clients, especially those who have given us several generations of their wealth to be managed. So it’s not just dealing with the current generation and the past two generations, but also going forward.”

While AlTi is very much aligned with AL Wealth Partners when it comes to its ethos and the approach in managing money and its clients, it was the company’s significant impact investment strategy that sealed the deal for the duo. “We think a lot of people in Asia would want and need such a purpose-driven, specialist impact strategy advisory service—and not many companies offer it,” Drago points out. “We also started our own impact portfolio managed by AlTi in the US and in Europe to learn how they do it so that we can make this offering in Asia. We always tell our clients we invest in the same way—and together with our overall investment strategies portfolios, this is where we walk the talk.”

The acquisition has helped the couple expand their horizons. “With a global group such as AlTi, which has 22 offices in ten countries, we’re able to draw upon the knowledge, support and resources from our other colleagues to deliver an innovative and personalised service embedded with the value that we’ve built with our clients. The ability to understand their pain points, identify and design the solutions required to resolve them, meet their needs and wants, and help them navigate their family dynamics has put us uniquely in the centre of the client, their family and their wealth.”

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