After a year of careful planning (and a few last-minute nervous flight bookings), Perth finally welcomed 100+ delegates from over 15 countries across the World to Western Australia. The honour was bestowed on Moore Australia to host the calendar-highlight, in collaboration with the APAC Regional Council. The small conference team didn’t take the commission lightly. After being apart for so long, this edition had to be special!

Elevate

At the start of the year Moore Global set forth the theme and narrative for all Moore Global conferences in 2022: Elevate. The narrative woven through these conferences tells the story of that which lies beyond our peripheral vision and horizon. It also emphasises the network’s commitment to our people and rising stars to always elevate talent in our respective organisations. As the final conference in the series, the APAC conference’s predominant aim was to drive this message home for the last time in 2022.

Science

Moore Global’s mission to build a value-driven, vibrant network, which encourages growth and helps people thrive, comes with a prerequisite of being able to facilitate opportunities and environments where our colleagues can build trust and engage in creative processes.

In terms of connectivity, since COVID, people around the world have been more connected than ever. However, research conducted in recent years suggests that virtual interaction comes with a cognitive cost for creative idea generation, as it focuses the communicators on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus.¹? To summarise the research simplistically; as our physical field of vision narrows to focus on the screen, our ability to think laterally narrows accordingly, thus hampering creative thought processes. ?

Additionally, the fields of Strategic Communications and Social Psychology have long confirmed that, for individuals to build meaningful connections and feelings of trust, they ideally must meet in person. This feeling of trust is imperative in facilitating team creativity. ^{2 ?}When you consider the studies, it is not difficult to understand why bringing people together in a room is important.

Interestingly, when it comes to which idea to pursue after the creative process has completed, studies find no evidence that virtual meetings are less effective than in-person groups.

Reminding the reader of our aim as a network to increase revenue through increased cross-firm referrals -which can only happen in a trust-based environment-, the studies reenforce our original conference goals: to Elevate our field of vision beyond the known.

(Re)Connect

Over the past five years the APAC and neighbouring regions have seen much change. In fact as a network, we have been through a re-brand, expansion, firms and partners have joined, some staff and firms have left. Such is the natural flow of things. But unfortunately it has also left us with significant blind spots in our peripheral vision. It was clear that, although Elevate was our ultimate conference aim, our foremost job was to re-introduce APAC colleagues to each other.

In fact, during our pre-event survey, the overwhelming majority (95%) of respondents cited ‘connecting with colleagues’ as their predominant motivation for joining the conference. In answer to this, we engineered more than ten dedicated networking opportunities throughout the two days with ample opportunity for conversation and connection.

All speakers were briefed ahead of the conference about our objective and narrative. Sessions were made as interactive as possible, whilst offering insight into new service lines such as ESG as well as delivering sector updates by our esteemed Sector Leaders.

Building connection builds brand affinity

Over the past two years Moore Australia has been measuring staff’s brand affinity at specific intervals. We have seen strong correlations between in-person events and brand affinity, whereby staff are more likely to answer ‘a(chǎn)gree’ or ‘strongly agree’ to the statement ‘I feel #proudlymoore’, when they have recently attended an in-person event or webinar.

True to form, 96.7% of APAC conference delegates either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘I feel #proudlymoore’ during the conference exit-survey. Whilst it is true that this hardly constitutes scientific research, when paired with established social psychology knowledge it is not surprising. Humans need connection.

As a network, we strongly rely on the connection between our personal values and brand values to retain staff. Allowing staff of all levels the time to attend conferences to help them build meaningful connections will help further cement that affinity.

Whereto from here

The Asia Pacific region is hugely diverse. Let’s not beat around the bush. We are all extremely different in our language, culture, legal frameworks, firm sizes, sectors, operating models, etc. However -in my opinion- herein lies our strength.

The diversity of the APAC region means we have to work harder than any other region on collaboration. During our school years most of us were taught that the more and harder we practice something, the better you become at something. By definition, this makes us better: we are better at cross-cultural communication, cross-border collaboration, working together to assist clients across multiple legal frameworks. Can we get better at it still? Absolutely! However, sharing our unique expertise freely with our partner-firms across the network will help us to continue to build the trust that is required to help our clients, colleagues and wider community thrive.

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References:

1. Brucks, M.S., Levav, J. Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation. Nature?605, 108–112 (2022). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04643-y

2. West, M. A. The social psychology of innovation in groups. in Innovation and Creativity at Work (eds West, M. A. & Farr, J. L.) 309–322 (John Wiley & Sons, 1990).

To all the colleagues from the member firms in Moore APAC,?

Upon the end of 2022 and at the beginning of 2023, wze have opened a new chapter and welcomed the New Year in different countries and jurisdictions in APAC.

In the past 2022, we have experienced difficulties, twists and turns that have never been experienced before; and we have also seen risks and challenges that have never been seen in the past.? But we have also witnessed much valued courage, perseverence, focus and warm-heart in the past year.? Despite the raging pendemic, the challenge from exchange fluctuation, the unstable geo-politic situation, as well as the challenges and risks from clients, markets and regulators around APAC, I am very pleased to report that we have collectively as Moore APAC still achieved a 7% YOY revenue increase in 2022.? This is an incredible achievement!

As one of the largest members of Moore Global, Da Hua has seen its 40th anniversory in 2022.? Upholding its fundamental corporate stands of “staying on the right path, gathering the right spirit and doing the down-to-the-earth work”, in 2022, Da Hua has achieved its double-digit increase contineously.? After achieving its strategic goal of “professionalism”, in 2023, Da Hua will further invest in the other 2 of its strategic goals of “service lines diversification” and “internationalization”, and will try to reach over USD600M in turnover.? Meanwhile, another two firms in the Greater China area – Moore Hong Kong and Moore Stephens Da Hua (Taiwan) CPAs – have also achieved their double-digit increases in 2022.? Especially, Moore Hong Kong under the outstanding leadership of its Managing Partner, Helen Tang, has made itself the 2nd largest member firm in Moore APAC, just second to Da Hua.? I sincerelly command and congratulate Helen and her partners!? On the other hand, within the national networks in Moore APAC, Moore Australia led by David Tomasi and Moore Malaysia led by Stephen Wan have both seen all their national firms achieved positive increases in 2022.? Finally, we have seen positive increases achieved by most of the medium and small firms in the region, in particular, our firms in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Sri Lanka ?- who have acheved increase of 20+%.? We are so proud of the efforts and achievements made in 2022 by these firms and their partners.

In 2022, we have recruited two national Top 10 firms to join our Moore APAC family from Vietnam (Moore AICS) and the Philippines (Moore Roxas Cruz Tangle and Co.).? The two firms not only rank respectively within the Top 10 nationally, but also have multiple offices setup in their courntries that can provide full-fledged professional services of auditing, accounting, taxation, consulting, etc.? Towards the end of 2022, we have also recruited Hyesung Accounting Cooperation and Hyesung Advisory Cooepration in South Korea.? The recruitment of the 3 firms well enhanced Moore Global’s presence in the 3 countries.? We look forward to the further collaboration and cooperation with the colleagues from these 3 new firms in 2023.

After 3 long years and with the pendemic fading away, Moore Global APAC region has organized its long-missing in-person Regional Conference in 2022.? After not been able to see each other for 3 years, APAC member firms have had their 2022 Regional Conference from November 30 to December 2, 2022 in Perth, Australia.? Over 100 delegates, including Moore Global CEO, Anton Colella, and partners and representatives from APAC member firms got together in the beautiful coast city in South-west Australia, and shared their in-depth views and experience in relation to topics like the regional markets, collaboration and cooperation amongst firms and talent development, etc.

In the past year, some APAC firms, e.g. from Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, have also actively participated in the global service line/sector group initiatives featuring audit & assurance, tax, ESG, shipping, etc.? These APAC firms’ representatives made our voice well heard at the global platforms.

Last but not least, I’d like to thank Moore Gloal China Desk and Australasia Asia Desk that have provided great support to the collaboration and cooperation in-between APAC firms and also for our APAC firms in doing business with other Moore firms outside APAC.? Also, my great thankfulness goes to Moore APAC Marketing Committee.? The team has made huge efforts in various APAC marketing initiatives and the organization of the Regional Conference in Perth.

In 2023, together with my colleagues from Moore APAC Excutive Committee and Regional Council, we will keep supporting APAC firms to grow in their local countries and jurisdictions.? We will focus on working on the client service collaboration cross-border and cross-region.? We will focus on the sector development e.g. ESG, and also on CaseWare implementation across APAC firms.? In the New Year, I hope colleagues from different parts of APAC to continue working hard, to keep talking to each other, supporting each other and to make the best of the Moore Global network.? We shall work together to contribute what we can give in the post-pandemic era to support Moore Global to be the one of the most respected international accounting and consulting network within the global Top 10.? I wish all our colleagues a great spring and a very good year ahead!?

Chairman, Moore Asia-Pacific
LIANG Chun