When it comes to the GAA’s Sam Maguire, John Casey is on the horns of a dilemma. He’s a Dub working for the Kerry-headquartered fintech company, Fexco, so when these two powerful teams meet his loyalties are split.
Gaelic football tensions aside, however, Casey has thoroughly enjoyed his 13-year globetrotting career with Fexco which began with an eight-year stint in Hong Kong followed by five years in Japan. Casey is now vice-president for Asia Pacific and, since late last year, has been based in Singapore where the company opened an office in November.
Graduated from UCD with a BComm, Casey was more drawn to the personal side of business at a time when many of his peers gravitated towards careers in accountancy and finance. This led him towards marketing and key account management roles first with documents company DMG, then with Vodafone and finally with AIB before the Casey family left Ireland for the Far East in 2010.
“The Celtic Tiger bubble had burst, and we were pretty miserable at the time,” Casey says. “We were waiting on visa applications for Australia but in the meantime the opportunity arose to go to Hong Kong. We’d always had a touch of wanderlust so when the Fexco job came up, we thought it’s now or never. As my wife’s sister and her family were already living in Hong Kong, we had a soft landing.
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“It’s easy to move when your kids are young. It gets more challenging as they get older as they’ve put down roots and developed strong friendships of their own,” Casey adds. “We really felt this with our most recent move as our older daughters, who are 17 and 14, had to leave good friends behind.
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“They go to an international school though, so a lot of their fellow pupils have the same shared experience of moving around. We like that it’s a very cosmopolitan environment for them to grow up in while, for us, the ex-pat parent community connected to the school is very friendly.”
The Casey family lives close to central Singapore. The children’s school is just five minutes away and Casey’s office commute is 20 minutes.
“What’s appealing to us so far is that it’s a very accessible city and seems easy to get around, but it’s also very expensive”, says Casey who runs to unwind having had his days of playing football to “quite a decent standard in Hong Kong” ended by a cruciate ligament injury.
“In terms of my work, Singapore is the optimum location as it’s a big international financial services hub. A lot of our multinational partners are here so it’s important to have a local presence to foster those relationships. Singapore is also very convenient to markets in southeast Asia – Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam for example – where we’re putting a lot of effort into building our footprint.
“English is the main language for business in Singapore so, from that perspective, it’s much easier than working in Japan,” Casey says. “Our kids learned more Japanese than we did and acted as our translators. We definitely needed them as one time we tried to order coffee and ended up with hot dogs….
I like working for an organisation that never stands still. It’s constantly evolving with new services and new markets and it’s exciting to be in the middle of that energy
“As regards the business culture, it takes a lot of time and patience to build relationships in Japan – much longer than at home – but once you learn the ropes, it all makes perfect sense,” Casey adds. “A lot of it is down to being mindful of others and taking personal responsibility for things. There is a code of conduct but there has to be in a city the size of Tokyo with over 20 million people. If it was a free for all, there would be chaos.”
Fexco is one of the enduring success stories of Irish business having been set up over 40 years ago to provide currency and bureau de change facilities. Since then, it has become an international payments and business services company with a presence in 29 countries and a headcount of more than 2,500 employees.
“I like working for an organisation that never stands still. It’s constantly evolving with new services and new markets and it’s exciting to be in the middle of that energy,” Casey says. “Where I am now is a whole new ball game as I have the opportunity to see what’s happening in the region and how we could add value. I take a lot of pride in working for an Irish company with a global presence while, on a personal level, it’s very nice to have such a strong connection to home.”
In addition to its presence in Japan and Singapore, Fexco has a satellite office in Hong Kong which also covers Macau. “We have nine staff in the region and very much believe in putting people on the ground to support our key relationships which are with banks and payment processing partners,” Casey says.
“We already have a strong footprint in Japan as a result of our time and investment there and we’re also operational in the Philippines, India and Australia. Our core proposition in the region is still the currency conversion piece and my role is growing our business in dynamic currency conversion, multicurrency pricing, ecommerce and ATMs.
“I also act as a listening post and the hot topic right now is ESG so I’m getting a sense of what’s happening on the ground in Asia Pacific and how we can feed into that wider strategy.”
