Falcon Certified Public Accountants Ltd., registered with the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants, specialises in providing audit, tax and corporate advisory services to a wide range of clients. Founder Gilbert Loke talks us through the firm and its commitment to offering the most innovative services possible in order to support clients and meet their ever-changing needs.
Established in 2009, Falcon is a cross border financial specialist, supporting clients looking to incorporate companies in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Thailand and other offshore jurisdictions covering Belize, Seychelles, Samoa, Marshalls Islands, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Bermuda. Gilbert discusses the firm’s service offering in more detail, outlining the breadth of Falcon’s knowledge and expertise.
“Here at Falcon, we provide a wide range of services particularly in cross border jurisdictions, acting as company secretary taking care of all the statutory matters for clients, assisting clients on their book-keeping and management accounting activities, assisting our clients on tax planning and compliance including application for offshore profits tax exemption in Hong Kong.
“In addition, we also offer audit assurance, and providing cross border listing on the U.S OTC Markets, NASDAQ, NYSE, as well as in Hong Kong and Australia. We also provide specialised services which are not normally provided by small to medium sized accounting firms – and these cover family offices where we assist our clients to strategically planning and protecting their legacies for multi-generations by setting up trusts or foundations – developing financial and wealth planning for their hard-earned wealth to ensure growth and capital appreciation, asset management and fund management services. Fundamentally, we are committed to offering a bespoke service tailored to our clients’ individual needs, whilst at the same time remaining independent so that we can ensure they receive the most relevant support and advice.”
Alongside his work at Falcon, Gilbert is qualified with Hacker Young, Chartered Accountants, from London, and has over 35 years of accounting, auditing, tax planning, asset protection, and cross border IPO listing experience. To enhance his contribution to the financial market Gilbert, in partnership with Co-Founder Mr. CK Lee, a qualified accountant with ACCA, also founded Greenpro Capital Corp. a company listed in OTC Markets, and its subsidiaries and related companies, Greenpro Venture Capital Ltd, Greenpro Trust Limited, Greenpro Family Office Limited and its fund unit, Greenpro Asia Strategic Fund, to provide effective financial solutions for clients.
As such Gilbert has a unique vantage from which to assess the global financial market. He provides us with an absorbing overview of how the latest developments in the market and how his firm is constantly adapting in order to remain at the forefront of innovation.
“In our opinion, accounting firms adopting and practising the traditional accounting models are finding it more challenging to sustain especially in the fast-changing environment, with high-technology, talented people, big data and innovative speed all changing the way we do business, let alone the changing banking operation, due to demanding requirements such as FATCA, CRS, KYC, AML, etc., making it more and more challenging for many accounting and secretarial firms in Hong Kong to sustain their business. It is vital that businesses in this industry are constantly innovating otherwise they will shrink due to competitive services, and will become unable to attract, recruit and retain talents, therefore encountering potential threat of competitions from your competitors, decreasing fee level and increasing costs relating to staffing and high office rental.
We need to get out of the Jurassic mind set and to be constantly up to date with the latest developments our industry has to offer. For example, WeChat, Whatsapp, QQ, etc., changes the way we communicate, WePay or AliPay changes the way we make payments, and Uber changes the way we use public transport. So, we have to know and understand how to make use of these technologies to add values to our chain of activities to stay profitable.
“As such, if we want to stay competitive then we need to make changes to our traditional model, be inventive and not be afraid to try various innovative approaches to deliver our services and to serve our clients more effectively, efficiently and economically.
“Therefore, Falcon are always seeking new ways to offer better services to clients, exploring ways we can support them that are not currently offering in the wider accounting and financial market. Currently our firm stands out from the crowd in these competitive times because we have our own offices and talented team members in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, with our own resources, providing a great variety of services, which are not provided by those small and medium sized firms.
“Currently, we have about 86 staff members within our group, and through this vast array of talents we are able to provide a wide variety of services in one place, including cross border IPO advisory services, asset protection services, family office services, trust and foundation services, asset management and fund management services. Our firm is not only a registered audit firm, but supported by our licensed trustee firm registered under the Trustee Ordinance in Hong Kong, our associated mutual fund registered with the Cayman Island Monetary Authority, and our associated licensed finance company registered under the Money Lenders Ordinance of Hong Kong. Offering such a vast array of solutions ensures that clients can save time and money by working with just one provider. In my personal opinion, the business growth we have achieved by way of clients’ referral through their recommendation and words of mouth advertising is testimony to the success of our approach.”
This vast array of services would not be possible without a committed and professional workforce, and Gilbert is very proud of his talented and dedicated team.
“At Falcon, we encourage our staff members to play in a multi-tasking role, as myself and the other senior managers do, as this helps us all to gain the capabilities, expertise, knowledge and skills to deal with different stakeholders, especially our clients, who are the most important stakeholders of all. Staff need to know and understand a variety of practice areas covering marketing, corporate finance, accounting, tax, company laws, economics, etc., because all of these are components of our clients’ businesses. For example, our cross-border team members are called Corporate Finance Engineers because they need to know more than just corporate finance in order to be able to do a better job for our clients. As an engineer, one has to possess various environmental knowledges relating to the client’s business inside out. This enables them to provide the level of services that our clients have come to expect from Falcon.”
Looking to the future, Gilbert believes that the firm’s core challenges revolve around obtaining skilled and dedicated staff who embody the right attitude and are willing to adapt to the company’s ethos.
“Moving forward, the challenges we face are attracting talented people who have passion, drive and positive attitudes. They must also be visionaries and have the desires to become leaders and entrepreneurs themselves. These talented people will make us more successful and act as our engine for growth in the coming future, and we look forward to working with them to develop our service offering to meet the everevolving needs of our clients.”
Company: Falcon Certified Public Accountants Limited
Name: Gilbert Loke
Email: gilbert@fcpa.com.hk
Web: www.fcpa.com.hk
Address: 2201, 22/F Malaysia Building, 50 Gloucester Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong