Dashed dreams

Born and raised as one of four siblings in Malaysia, Ang was a typical child who loved to play. “My mom was a housewife and my father owned a hardware store,” he says. “One day, my dad collapsed and [the] next day, he was gone. It was late-stage colon cancer. My mom didn’t know how to run a business, so we sold our store to an uncle. I was pushed to become the head of the family.”

“As a youngster, I dreamed of becoming a policeman or a fireman. Instead, after my classes, I became a plumber, house painter, gardener — anything just to earn extra money. Putting food on the table was more important,” he adds.

The experience made him bitter. “People kept asking me if my father had life insurance,” Ang recalls. “I said: ‘What’s that?’ Then I asked myself: Why didn’t my dad get one? If he really loved us, why didn’t he live up to his responsibility? But I realized that life insurance was generally not known at the time. And today I am in the insurance business. Maybe it is God’s will.”

Being financially challenged, he knew it was impossible for him to get a university degree. Smart thinking made him look for the next best solution to his funding problem. “I joined the Malaysian military service, so I could have a salary.” He left the country’s air force after over four years with the rank of lieutenant. And, yes, he knows how to fly an airplane.

Ang used his savings to finance his undergraduate studies in Australia. While there, he worked parttime to earn extra income. He later graduated with a business degree from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and finished his masteral studies at Bath University in the United Kingdom.

He then began a career in corporate banking, then joined AIA, the largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group. He has been with them for 20 years now, occupying different roles in the region — Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and China, where he stayed the longest at 10 years. There, he played a pivotal role in changing not just his agency’s mindset, but also their customers.

“I was in China when it was just opening up. They didn’t know much about insurance,” Ang recalls.