ICT UPDATE | GoBear appoints new chief executive
Adrian Chng to succeed Andre Hesselink as GoBear’s CEO.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES — GoBear has appointed Adrian Chng to succeed Andre Hesselink as its new CEO as of July 16th. The appointment will see Adrian lead the management team with Ivonne Bojoh, Frank Stevenaar, and Marnix Zwart as GoBear continues to build on its successes and rapidly scale the business into new products and markets.
Adrian Chng is one of Asia’s foremost FinTech startup entrepreneurs, co-founding two FinTech startups so far and sitting on the board of many others. Most recently, Adrian was CEO of Fintonia, a merchant bank he founded in 2015 that invests in FinTech companies in ASEAN and Hong Kong. In addition, he co-founded Credolab and AsiaKredit in 2016 and 2017 respectively, driven by strong commitment to helping customers and the community thrive and creating employment for people. Adrian is also well known for leading Asian jobs portal JobsDB.com and a key achievement was their AUD 1 billion merger with JobStreet.com in 2014. “There is no doubt that faster, cheaper and easier access to basic financial services improves people’s lives,” Adrian said. “That is why I am so excited to join GoBear right now; we are in the middle of launching new products and expanding into new markets like Indonesia – we are reaching more and more people every day.”
GoBear was started as a partnership between Aegon, a global insurance company, and Walvis, a Dutch venture capital fund, in 2015. Since its inception, GoBear has grown from its home market of Singapore to serving millions of users across Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Vietnam and, soon, Indonesia. The company now employs over 100 people with 19 different nationalities. Andre said, “I am proud of how much GoBear has accomplished, becoming a leading Asian financial comparison platform. I would like to thank the employees, partners, and users of GoBear for making this possible. I will definitely miss my day-to-day involvement with GoBear, but I am assured that the company is in very capable hands to make it even more successful.”
Andre will move back to the Netherlands and continue to be involved as a Special Advisor to GoBear and its shareholders, Aegon and Walvis. The shareholders would like to thank Andre for his great entrepreneurship and contribution to the development of GoBear.
