Huimin " Jenny " Zhan, CFA, is the president of Good
Hope Investment, a subsidiary of Creditease Corporation specializing in investor programs for global residence and citizenship. Before founding Good Hope in 2014, Zhan was chief strategy officer of Ambow Education Holding Ltd. She has also served as senior consultant for several multi-national financial organizations in Asia since 2011.
Prior to shifting focus to China, Zhan was a portfolio manager and managing director of GMO LLC, a Bostonbased global investment leader specializing in managing multi-asset class strategies. She was recognized for GMOs successful Greater China equity research and Emerging Market portfolio management from 2002 to 2011.
What is unique about your company compared to other migration agencies?
Good Hope is a subsidiary of CreditEase, a global leader in market place lending and one of the largest wealth management companies in China. Good Hope specializes in investor programs for residence and citizenship. We empower high net worth individuals in the Great China region to participate in the globalization via secure and compliant cross-border wealth management solutions. Good Hope presents clients with world-wide opportunities in property investment, high quality education, legal tax mitigation and assets allocation.
When and why did you decide to enter into this business?
I joined Creditease in 2013. With a group of like-minded partners, I co-founded Good Hope in early 2014. As an investment professional living in U. S. for most of my career life, I was amazed by how the EB-5 program was presented by agents in China at that time. I felt the market really needed transparency, integrity and professionalism, which a quality wealth management firm should provide to safe guard the interest of our clients and the high net worth families in China. We view ourselves as an investment advisor looking for the best EB-5 solutions for our clients, not an agent marketing immigration products.
What are the biggest obstacles facing the EB-5 program? per-person based quota system to a per-applicant based counting system, or, issuing EAD to applicants with I-526 approvals are all feasible approaches to resolve the issue.
Are you worried about the increased Chinese capital control?
Any industry that requires capital going overseas should be concerned, but globalization of its currency is the long-term goal of the Chinese government.
Does your company offer both the regional center option and the direct investment option?
We only offer EB-5 regional center projects right now, but we could provide direct investment projects for our clients if there is a market need for it.
What kind of projects do you usually look for and do you have the capacity to take on more projects now?
We adopt a due diligent system commonly found in U. S. real estate investments. It evaluates EB-5 project from different aspects to mitigate counter party, systematic and non-systematic risk. Currently, only less than 5 percent of the projects can pass the evaluation and get approval from Creditease’ s risk control committee to market at the end.
Do you market other investment immigration programs besides EB-5?
We also currently market U. S. EB-1A and EB-1C program and a couple European and Canadian investment immigration programs.
What are your plans for expansion of your company?
We have followed our clients’ demand and expand around immigrants’ echo system, including tax planning, property investment, assets allocation, education counseling and family trust.
The long backlog of the Chinese applications is hurting the attractiveness of this program. Changing the current
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