Excellence Award 2024-2025

Congratulations to winner of 2024-2025 Credit Management Excellence Award (CMEA), Mr. Daniel W. K. Yuen MBA, MPA, MA, FCMA, FCPA, Head of Finance, IT, Administration and SD Swire Motors. The award was presented by Ms. Tiffany P. Wong, winner of 2023-2024 CMEA, and Ms.Ruby Tang, the Award Committee Chairman of HKCCMA.

"The purpose of the CMEA is to recognize the achievements of an individual in the credit management industry. The winner is chosen based on five criteria and is subject to approval from the Executive Committee of the HKCCMA."

Daniel has demonstrated exceptional leadership in credit management and risk practices, driving significant improvements in operational efficiency and reducing credit risks. With over 30 years of experience, Daniel has maintained a track record of zero bad or doubtful debts, reduced credit approval turnaround times by 20%, and actively contributed to industry growth through sharing and mentoring young professionals. His dedication to excellence and innovation has made a lasting impact on his organization and the broader credit management industry.

Below is the text of the speech given by Mr. Daniel W. K. Yuen MBA, on accepting this prestigious award.

Good evening respected Chairperson, esteemed members of HKCCMA and honorable guests,

It is my great honor to be here to receive the 2024-2025 HKCCMA Credit Management Excellence Award today. This recognition holds profound significance not only to me, but also to my team as without my team's support, I think I will not be here tonight.

Let me introduce myself first.  I am Daniel Yuen, Head of Finance, IT, Administration and SD at Swire Motors.

In the past over 30 years of professional accounting and credit collection experience, I always ask myself the following questions,

"How to create value to the shareholders?"

"How to mitigate business and credit risks?"   

"How to collect money from debtors earlier?"

I think you all agree that the answers vary from industry to industry and the level of difficulty has increased during the pandemic and in the post-pandemic time. Nowadays, on-time credit collection seems a difficult task for most credit practitioners. Our company is not an exception!

To me, the answers to the above questions coincide with HKCCMA's mission in promoting excellence in credit and debt management which echoes my life philosophy of not maintaining the status quo and to overcome challenges ahead. With this philosophy, I have achieved zero bad or doubtful debts in the companies when I am in-charge of the finance and credit controls functions.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to share the two breakthroughs I achieved at Swire Motors, namely in the areas of Sales Recognition and Credit Management.

Swire Motors is an importer and dealer selling trucks and buses. We are selling commercial vehicles (CV) to truck and bus operators. To suit their operational needs, different kinds of body building are required, e.g.: mixer body for concrete customers, tipper body for construction customers, etc. Body building time is used to take 1 to 3 months or even longer, depending on the specifications of the body requirements.

Sales Recognition

The first breakthrough point is in Sales Recognition. Being in line with the industry practice, the point of sales is at the time we deliver the chassis to the body builders who acknowledge receipt on behalf of the customers. This approach has been adapted for years with no issues. However, in the time of COVID-19, body building process is delayed due to many reasons like lack of manpower and also financial situation, resulting in pro-longed credit collection. In such case, we have nothing to do with the customers as they always claimed that the body building process is not "controlled" by them as they have not received the vehicles.

Since 2020, new approach of sales recognition has been implemented under which the point of sales has changed to the delivery to the customers instead of their body builders.  As compared with the traditional way, credit collection process has been reduced by at least 1 to 3 months. Most importantly, under the new approach, the reason of "delayed body building process not controlled by us" is no longer the excuse in the credit collection process of not paying to us on time.

Credit Management

The second breakthrough point is in Credit Management. In the CV industry, more than 80% customers pay on credit. For years, given good credit rating, we used to sell vehicles on credit according to the company  policy.  The customers then arrange vehicle financing from their banks and pay to us afterwards. However, in the existing uncertain/difficult business environment, most banks or financiers have tightened financing application as they require borrowers to provide sound financial statements in the past three years or require guarantee to back up the loan application. We have faced the situation of pro-longed credit collection process as a result of extra financing application time required. Some loan applications takes more than 3 months to obtain approval by their banks or financiers.

Since 2024, we have changed the approach of granting credit to customers. In addition to good credit rating, for those customers who need financing, given our sales contracts, we request them to apply financing application  first.  Upon receipt the valid "Loan  Confirmation  Document" from their banks, credit will then be granted to the customers. Nowadays, the credit collection period is reduced to around 2 to 3 weeks as we only grant credit term to the customers after they get green lights for loan applications.

Having said that, with the above breakthroughs, our credit collection period is significantly improved from previously more than 6 months to less than 1 month now. This helps relieve the credit collection process but also, most importantly, mitigate business and credit risks in such uncertain and difficult business environment.

Before closing my speech, I would like to share with you some inspirations which I read recently from a book saying that "No progress can be achieved if one becomes satisfied with merely maintaining the status quo and forgets to constantly press forward and undertake new challenges", sourced from The New Human Revolution Vol.21 written by Daisaku Ikeda.

Finally, many thanks again to Ruby for the nomination and to HKCCMA for recognizing my effort. I am confident that with all our joint effort, we will and we can continue to contribute to the industry in the future. Cheers!