Presented to the Board or a committee
Serindah Healthcare Group
Board of directors
January 2019–present
Present quarterly to the board on enquiries, international admissions, brand investment and advertising compliance as group CMO; not a director.
Adrian Ongkiat · Chief Marketing Officer · Singapore / Southeast Asia
Seeing marketing risk before a regulator does
Board and committee exposure
Reported to a committee
Serindah Healthcare Group
Board risk committee
April 2022–present
Report twice a year on facilitator audits, facilitator-related complaints, screening sales practice and advertising approvals.
Committee contribution
| Capacity | Committees |
|---|---|
| Ready to join | Risk · Audit · Patient experience and quality, where constituted |
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 20 days per year
- Current directorships
- 0
- Sectors
- Healthcare services · Consumer health and traditional medicine · Aged care and dental services
- Company type
- Listed or private-equity-backed company in Singapore or Malaysia that sells health services or products directly to the public
- Company stage
- Growing across borders, reviewing sales practice or responding to a regulatory or reputational question about its marketing
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking a first non-executive seat on the board of a company in Singapore or Malaysia that serves the public directly in health: a clinic or dental chain, a diagnostic or aged-care provider, or a consumer-health or traditional-medicine brand. I would add most where the company's growth depends on marketing, referral arrangements or cross-border patients and its board wants someone who understands how those can go wrong. I would join a risk or audit committee as a member and expect to learn from its chair. A company whose board meets in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore suits my travel; one requiring regular visits further afield would test the twenty days I can offer. I am not the right candidate for a board that needs clinical, financial-reporting or capital-markets expertise, and I would prefer a chair to tell me so early.
My contribution to a board
A healthcare company's most serious reputational risks often begin in its marketing: a testimonial nobody approved, a commission that grows with the bill, a counter incentive that sells a test a doctor would not suggest. These arrangements rarely appear in board papers until a complaint or a regulator brings them there. I can help a board see them earlier. I know how healthcare advertising is reviewed and approved in Singapore and Malaysia, how international patient channels and their payments work, and how screening and consumer-health products are sold at the counter. I can read an enquiry dashboard and tell directors which numbers measure demand and which measure our own sales pressure. I am not a clinician and would never second-guess a medical judgement. My contribution would be to ask management how each commercial arrangement affects the advice a patient receives, and to make sure the board hears the answer from the people who own it.
Judgement in practice
Accepting slower recovery to remove a payment conflict
Ending bill-linked commissions while borders were closed meant accepting that admissions from Indonesia would recover more slowly than our competitors'. They did: about 83 per cent of the 2019 level in 2023, when we estimated others near 95 per cent. On another board, I would ask the same questions I asked of myself. What advice does each payment encourage? Who would know if it went wrong? What loss are we prepared to accept, and for how long? I set out the expected shortfall to our risk committee before the decision, not after it, and reported recovery each half-year. A board needs that sequence: the cost stated in advance, a date to review it and a clear owner, so that a principled decision is not reversed at the first disappointing quarter.
Separating clinical judgement from a commercial incentive
The screening incentive case turned on a distinction boards can lose: whether a test is useful is a clinical question, but whether staff are paid to sell it is a governance one. I did not decide which tests were appropriate; I removed a payment that put commercial pressure on a decision clinicians should guide. As a director, I would ask management to show which sales incentives touch a clinical or quasi-clinical choice, and how the medical leadership has reviewed them. I would also want to know what the change will cost and who loses income from it, because the registration staff who resigned taught me that the people affected must be part of the design. Good intentions announced badly can still damage a team.
My first year on a board
In the first months I would read the company's advertising approvals, complaints log and sales-incentive schemes before I offered a view on its brand. I would ask to meet the medical or professional lead, the head of compliance and the people who handle complaints, as well as the chief executive and the marketing director. I would sit through at least one full cycle of risk and audit committee meetings, asking questions about how information reaches the committee rather than proposing changes. If the company sells across borders, I would want to understand each market's rules from its own advisers rather than assume that my Singapore and Malaysian experience transfers. I would also visit at least one clinic, store or service counter unannounced as a customer, because what a patient is told at the front desk is rarely what the board paper describes. By the end of the year, I would hope the chair could point to one area, perhaps referral payments or published patient information, where my questions had improved the board's oversight.
Conflicts and their management
My employer runs hospitals in Malaysia and screening centres in Singapore, so any company competing in those services is a direct conflict I would not take on. Less obvious connections need checking too: suppliers of diagnostic equipment and laboratory services, insurers and third-party administrators who pay our bills, advertising agencies, facilitators in Indonesia and the companies our private-equity shareholder owns. Before accepting any seat I would list these relationships for the chair and my own chief executive. If a matter touched Serindah, I would declare it and leave the discussion. I would never carry information about pricing, facilitator terms or patient volumes between the two companies. If conflicts became frequent enough to limit my participation, I would raise with the chair whether I should step down rather than serve as a partial director. Time is a quieter conflict: a hospital group has incidents that cannot wait, and I would agree with both chairs in advance how a clash between a committee meeting and an urgent matter at Serindah would be handled.
My independence statement
I am an employee of a private hospital group and receive no payment from any other healthcare company. Whether I would be independent for a particular board is for that board and its advisers to determine against the applicable code; I would provide my full employment, shareholding and family details so they can do so.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian requirement and does not apply to the Singapore and Malaysian seats I am considering; I am not registered with it.
- Completed a director-preparation programme for first-time board members in 2025 and studied the expectations of the Singapore Code of Corporate Governance for board committees.
- Attend the Serindah risk committee's annual review of its risk register to learn how directors weigh operational and reputational risks.