Jemmy Paul Wawointana shares his story in leading his companies in Indonesia
Start small and do it diligently: these words might as well be the theme in Jemmy Paul Wawointana’s career journey. In the capital market today, he is one very successful leader, but his interests in the investment market started when Wawointana was just a high school student. “At that time, my older brother, who had already worked, invested his money in the stock market and mutual funds,” he said to Tatler Indonesia during a virtual meeting. “From him, I realised that working full-time in an office is not the only way to make money. From investments, you can even get a higher interest rate than you get from the banks.”
To pursue a career in the investment market, Wawointana decided to get a degree in accounting. “I think an accounting degree gives you the basic knowledge on, for instance, valuing a company’s assets, which is very important in my line of work.” After graduating from university, he worked as an analyst for a few years before becoming a fund manager and rising in the ranks as the CEO of Sucor Asset Management.
In this position, Wawointana sees the potentials and challenges in the Indonesian investment market. “Our capital market is quite left behind compared to that in other countries. Only 1 per cent of our population has mutual funds investment, while in other countries the rate is around 10 to 20 per cent.” However, he has a very optimistic outlook regarding the climate here despite uncertainties brought by the pandemic.
“The number of investors in Indonesia soared up to 100 per cent this year,” Wawointana said. “This pandemic has given a lot of free time to a lot of people, which might be why there are more and more people who decided to learn about investment.” He also mentioned that investment applications developed by many local start-ups have their share of the growth.
Moreover, with improvements by regulators in the past decade, people now have more trust to invest their money in the capital market. “We often hear about fraud investment cases in the news these days, but compared to how it used to be ten years ago, the number of cases is much lower,” he said. “The key is to understand the kind of investment products you want to buy.”
Wawointana then gave examples, such as learning how to value the assets and the industry of the company before buying its stocks. For mutual funds, he advised understanding the risks and potential profits of each product: stocks, government obligations, or money market fund. With such an understanding of the investment world, it was of no surprise that he earned an award for Fund Manager of the Year from 2020 Tokoh Finansial Indonesia Award by Investor Magazine and Berita Satu.
When we asked him what his plan will be in the new year, he answered, “I want to create an impact on a lot more people through my line of work in the capital market. Also, I plan to work on making Sucor Asset Management as one of the top three asset management companies in Indonesia to support overall economic growth.”
