GOLFING can teach you valuable and relevant lessons on investments, according to ING Funds Bhd chief executive officer Steve Ong.
“Investment returns are not within one's control and an investor cannot predict it, and the same applies in golf,” he quipped.
“You are not in control of other golfers' game because he is playing the game himself. The only thing a person can do is to manage his own reactions and responses towards his own game and not to others.
“At the end of the day, the greatest lesson one can learn here is how one can contain one's emotions and not be influenced by other external factors,'' he added.
Ong, 46, who is an avid golfer and traveller, said similar lesson could be learnt when a person travelled extensively abroad.
He said that by travelling, one could learn and practice so many things, including investment philosophy and style.
Reading, he said, gave him a sense of tranquillity as well as new insights on certain matters. He said he liked reading investment and strategy books in line with his job and this helped him come out with new ideas and broaden his knowledge on business and investment.
Ong has 21 years of experience in the field of insurance. Prior to assuming the position of CEO in ING Funds, he was the senior vice-president for corporate marketing and business development at ING Insurance and was responsible for product development, branding and communications as well as agency training and development.
On the international front, Ong has been involved in supporting insurance distribution channel developments in the Philippines, Jakarta, Thailand and India.
On the challenges facing the unit trust industry, he said, one of the main concerns was that investors lacked education in unit trust investment.
“Investors need to be further educated on the risk and return concept, and the asset allocation processes to the extent that they fully understand where they have put their monies into.
“They should know what they are investing in and the objective of their investments, be it for retirement or lifestyle purposes,'' he said.
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