Sandy Lau

Sandy Lau feels like the development of her career has led her, almost inevitably, to her role as GoBear’s head of Hong Kong.

The online comparison website has let her leverage on a career of marketing in different industries. She now has the chance to take command of a P&L.

“GoBear has married it all together,” she said.

Lau got her start in digital marketing for banks such as ANZ, Citi and HSBC, first in Australia before she moved to Hong Kong in 2006. At Citi, her role included business development, and that set her on the path to technology. “My task was to prove we could acquire customers using digital channels,” she said, learning how to enable customers to transact and manage products online. “I loved the whole change in consumer behavior.”

HSBC widened her experience into the B2B world, where she took on a regional marketing role for global banking and markets. She ran projects connecting the corporate bank to customers through integrated marketing communication strategies.

She combined both her B2C and B2B experiences as chief marketing officer at Standard Life. “Insurance has a disconnect with the end user,” she said, but technology can bridge the gap.

Her first taste of the startup world came when she joined a digital advertizing company, iClick, to help it monetize business. Why couldn’t banks use the same techniques to produce and market their products, while also empowering their users? In 2016 she joined GoBear as Hong Kong country director to find out.

GoBear is an online comparison site headquartered in Singapore, and Lau was attracted by the idea of a startup able to disrupt the ecosystem. “We think believe we can address inefficiencies in the search, match and transact process in financial products,” she said.