Four shortlisted for Global Custodian’s 2026 APAC industry award

Global Custodian has shortlisted Alvin Chia, Francois Verlaine, Rehan Ahmed and Wai Mei Hong for its 2026 Industry Person of the Year award for Asia Pacific. The winner will be revealed at Leaders in Custody Asia on May 28, 2026, at Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

Alvin Chia is Northern Trust’s head of digital assets innovation for APAC. Over the past year he led the firm’s regional digital-assets strategy and worked with regulators and market participants on next-generation infrastructure. His work included involvement with the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Project Ensemble and the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Project Acacia. He chairs the Digital Assets Working Group at the Australian Custodial Services Association.

Francois Verlaine is managing director and head of ASEAN and South Asia for financing and securities services at Standard Chartered. He expanded the bank’s securities-services presence across investor, asset-owner and insurance segments in the region. Recent mandates under his leadership include work with Thailand’s Government Pension Fund and Singapore-based institutions LGI and FWD. Several of Standard Chartered’s ASEAN markets ranked strongly in industry agent-bank surveys.

Rehan Ahmed is chief executive officer of Marketnode. Over the past year Marketnode developed digital market infrastructure for funds, fixed income and digital assets. The firm worked with Euroclear to combine Euroclear’s FundsPlace platform with Marketnode’s blockchain-enabled platform for an end-to-end funds processing solution in Singapore. Marketnode joined Euroclear and Microsoft on projects that use artificial intelligence for fund distribution and tokenisation workflows. Marketnode was appointed an authorised distributor of WisdomTree’s digital funds to institutional investors in Singapore.

Wai Mei Hong is managing director, senior country officer and head of global corporate banking for Singapore at JP Morgan. During the past year JP Morgan was selected as custodian for Income Insurance’s roughly SGD 40 billion asset base, providing global custody, fund accounting, collateral management, securities lending and data services. The bank also handled the transfer of more than $40 billion of developed-market assets for the Employees Provident Fund of Malaysia. Hong joined JP Morgan in 2007 and has led client coverage and corporate banking operations in Singapore and ASEAN.

The shortlist recognises individuals judged to have made contributions over the previous 12 months to custody, securities services and market infrastructure across Asia Pacific. The Industry Person award will be presented during the Leaders in Custody Asia event, which brings together senior figures from securities services and fund services in the region.

Earlier in May, the Leaders in Custody awards in London named Phil Brown, chief executive officer of Clearstream Banking, as Industry Person of the Year following a live vote by more than 300 attendees.