This interview is part of the Leading Asia series, which features in-depth conversations with some of the region’s most value-creating leaders on what it takes to realize bold ambitions and take them further.
Daniel Tsai does not describe himself as a second-generation entrepreneur. The distinction matters to him. When he and his brother Richard joined the business founded by their father, Tsai Wan- Tsai, they did not simply inherit it — they rebuilt it, rebranded it, and expanded it into territory their father had never entered. The result is Fubon Group, one of the most diversified and profitable institutions in Asia.
From a company that began as a single non-life insurer, Fubon today spans financial services, telecommunications, e-commerce, property development, and content businesses. Its reach now extends across Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Vietnam, South Korea, and beyond. The scale of what the brothers have built is reflected in the numbers. In 2025, Forbes ranked Daniel and Richard Tsai as the #1 wealthiest individuals in Taiwan.
These are not figures that came from inheritance. The Tsai brothers took a family business and transformed it into an Asia powerhouse — through bold M&A, systematic expansion of licenses and business lines, and a rigorous approach to corporate governance that was unheard of in Taiwan’s financial sector when Daniel first joined the company in 1981.
Tsai describes his own leadership as something between founder and inheritor — someone who carries his father’s values while exercising a founder’s ambition. In this conversation, he traces the arc of that journey: from the early years of earning respect among professional managers, to the 1998 Taiwan financial crisis that forced a reckoning with risk, to the personal philosophy that has guided decades of bold M&A. He speaks with equal candor about the discipline he inherited from his father — six words that, read correctly, amount to a risk-management framework — and the evolving role he plays today, less as an innovator himself than as someone who creates the conditions for others to innovate.
Running through the conversation is a theme that extends beyond any single company: that some of the strongest businesses in Asia derive their resilience not from scale alone, but from the harmony between Asian values and Western strategy — between what a family believes and how it chooses to grow. Tsai has lived that proposition for more than four decades. What follows is an edited version of the conversation.
‘The challenge is always to find the balance between tradition and modern business practices.’
Albert Chang: You have described yourself as something other than a second-generation entrepreneur. How do you think about your own role in the Fubon story?
Daniel Tsai: The first company in our group was founded by my father. But I like to think of myself not as a second-generation entrepreneur — not a second. Why? Because we didn’t just inherit the business. We actually created new businesses. We founded many of the new ventures that would define the group in later years.
When I joined, I wanted to be respected by the professional managers. If I couldn’t earn their respect, I could not lead. So from the beginning, I tried to think of myself as a professional manager — someone working to transform a family-run business into a professionally managed institution. That was the biggest hurdle for someone in my position — someone being handed responsibility to take the family business to the next level. Of course, we could have kept things simpler, kept everything in the family. But my father had great expectations for us. We didn’t want to disappoint him. We wanted to make him proud.
‘Opportunity is only for the people who are ready.’
My father is also very different from other first-generation entrepreneurs. He had a lot of trust in his sons. He gave us a free hand to try to create new businesses. That trust was everything.
Albert Chang: How did your father’s values shape your leadership philosophy?
Daniel Tsai: A lot of my philosophy was greatly influenced by my father. His thinking was very traditional — shaped by a long history of family trading and strong cultural values. A lot of modern Asian business leaders come from backgrounds like this: families with great old traditions. The challenge is always to find the balance between those traditions and modern business practices — things like corporate governance, which nobody talked about when I joined the company in 1981.
My father gave all of our employees key words to live by — a maxim for all of us. The first was sincerity. Then diligence — though he eventually changed this to include frugality. And the last two words were harmony and modesty. Many of our colleagues thought frugality was about saving costs. But the way I interpreted it, he was actually asking us to be risk-averse — to manage our risk better. The Chinese philosophy behind frugality is that you cannot be greedy. And when you become greedy, unnecessary risks follow.
Albert Chang: In the early 1990s, Fubon made a very public statement about the kind of company it wanted to become. What was that moment, and what did it mean?
Daniel Tsai: The date we announced to the world that we wanted to be seen as a professionally managed company was in the early 1990s. I believe we were the first financial institution in Taiwan to launch a serious corporate identity system — not just a logo redesign, but a genuine soul-searching exercise about who we were and what we stood for. We wanted to do good for society. Most important of all was our identity — we were searching for what our identity would be.
We started out as part of the Cathay Group, so our property and casualty company, one of the oldest Cathay companies, was still named Cathay General Insurance. We renamed it Fubon. That was the first year of the Fubon dynasty. This introduction of our corporate identity system, together with our corporate philosophy, was a very important moment for us. We finally had something we believed in. We would have a mission.
At the time, we positioned ourselves as a financial supermarket — a one-stop destination for all financial services. As the Taiwan financial market liberalized, we applied for all the licenses. We set up a bank, then life insurance, then a fund management company. We already had a securities company. So in the early 2000s, before the Taiwanese financial sector had even conceived of a financial holding company structure, we were already operating as one in practice.
Albert Chang: It may look smooth from the outside, but I suspect the journey had some very difficult moments. What were one or two defining experiences that shaped who you became as a leader?
Daniel Tsai: Everything was going well — our new ventures were gaining footing, the Fubon name was gradually becoming known to consumers. The name Fubon was new; it had only been launched in 1992. And then the Taiwan financial crisis hit in 1998, the year after the Asian financial crisis. That was when we realized something uncomfortable: we were not capable enough to see a crisis coming. We were too busy growing our business and overlooking what risk management means, especially in the business of finance. In finance, risk management is really the bottom line.
Albert Chang: Fubon’s reputation is built on bold growth — M&A, diversification, expansion across Asia. How do you reconcile that with a philosophy of frugality and risk aversion?
Daniel Tsai: What came out of that difficult moment was also an opportunity. We found a very good partner in Citigroup, which invested and became a shareholder, giving us new capital to replenish what we had lost. But the biggest lesson from Citi was not the capital — it was watching how they had grown through M&A. Sandy Weill was a dealmaker. He had built Citi as a financial supermarket. When he looked at us, he saw an Asian version of the model he believed in. We learned that other than organic growth, we also had to grow through M&A.
I would not call it just going bold. We also took calculated bets. There is a Chinese saying: opportunity is only for the people who are ready. We did all of these deals — the bank mergers, the acquisition of ING Life, acquisitions in Hong Kong — at the right timing. None of the acquisitions we did were seen, in the end, as having been done too expensively. Some of the valuations looked high at the time. But we were always able to realize the synergy afterward. That is what I am most proud of — even our most recent acquisition, the merger with Jih Sun Financial Holding Company, the first-ever merger between two financial holding companies in Taiwan. We realized almost all of the synergies we had calculated.
Taiwanese financial institutions were very conservative — there was essentially no M&A activity before we started. We were the first. And yes, there is a tension between being bold and being risk-averse. But the resolution is not to choose one over the other. It is to be disciplined enough that when the moment is right, you can move decisively. The frugality philosophy is not about timidity. It is about not getting greedy — not overreaching, not buying things you cannot integrate, not mistaking momentum for capability.
Albert Chang: You personally interview entry-level recruits and management trainees. Why, and what does that practice say about your leadership philosophy?
Daniel Tsai: I remember I interviewed everybody — even the interns. It is a tradition my father started, and I have continued it. I often joke that the reason my father did it was so that employees would recognize him on the street — that he was the boss. But the truth in that joke is important: when you do the interview, it is not only for you to get to know the candidate. It is for the candidate to get to know you. What kind of person am I? What kind of questions do I ask? What does that tell them about our culture and what we value?
I interview all the new management trainees — our MAs. During MA interview week I am extremely busy. In ten minutes, they may not fully understand me, but they get an impression. And from that impression, they can begin to understand what this company stands for.
During the MA training period, I also speak to them directly and take their questions. I want them to hear firsthand what my hopes are for them and what our goals are for the company. I want people to have the same aim — to synchronize our thinking. We are a large organization. I cannot watch every employee all the time, and neither can my executives. So people have to believe in the same direction. That starts on day one.
‘If the family cannot have harmony, the business cannot have harmony, and society cannot have harmony.’
Albert Chang: How has your leadership style evolved as the organization has grown?
Daniel Tsai: When the company was smaller, I was the innovator. I came up with ideas, led discussions on new products and services, attended every branch opening. My colleagues could feel that energy directly from me. But I realized at some point that I could not keep doing that — and more importantly, that I should not. My coworkers saw a big shift in my management style. I am no longer trying to be the innovator, no longer trying to be the one who comes up with the brilliant idea.
When the organization becomes larger, when you have people coming from diverse backgrounds and different companies, you cannot give specific instructions on everything. And you should not want to. My role now is to encourage others to innovate. I want people not to back away from problems — to confront issues directly, to be aggressive in finding solutions.
I believe that if you are genuinely trying to solve a real problem and you think hard enough about it, innovative ideas emerge from that process. The problem is that many people are only used to executing. They are afraid of doing things they are not good at. But if you never try to do things you are not good at, you will never become good at anything. You cannot just be good at one thing. In a fast-evolving world, you have to be good at many things. That is how I urge my people to be innovative.
Albert Chang: Building something of this scale, in a family business context, with all the pressures that entails — where did you find the courage to be so bold?
Daniel Tsai: It is very rare — even among Taiwanese or Asian family businesses — to see two brothers working as closely as Richard and I have. If you can work with your brother, he is the best partner you can ever have. You can be completely direct and honest. You do not have to hide anything. You can consult each other, challenge each other, and make joint decisions. Two minds are better than one.
I think as a family business, this is what makes us unique. My father was very proud of the fact that he had two sons who could work together. There is a Chinese saying that if two brothers can work together, they can collectively break anything — even the hardest metal. My father always wanted us to work closely together. And we have found a way to make it work because we know each other’s strengths. We have had to live with each other’s weaknesses. But we try to support each other through them. It has been a very unusual personal journey.
I believe this deeply: if the family cannot have harmony, the business cannot have harmony, and society cannot have harmony. It starts with your immediate family. Living under the same roof is tough enough, but working under the same roof is even harder. But we have found a way. And we know our partnership will go on.
Albert Chang: If your father could see everything that Fubon has become — what do you think he would feel, and what would he say?
Daniel Tsai: My father would want the next generation — not just my children but the generation after — to carry the heritage forward. Not necessarily in a business sense, but in terms of continuity of family values across generations. We still live under the same roof as a big family.
I think he would say: Remember your roots. Remember your heritage. For yourself, for the family, and for our society. Live those values. Pass them on. That is the real legacy that my father passed down to all of us. And we try to live those values every day.
Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of McKinsey & Company or have its endorsement.