At the Asian Private Banker DPM Leaders Conversation 2026 in Singapore, our Co-Founder, CEO and CIO Paul Lee took to the stage alongside peers from Deutsche Bank Private Bank and Tsao Family Office to address one of the defining questions in wealth management today: is the duty of a discretionary portfolio manager to protect clients by steering clear of what they cannot see, or to deliver outsized returns by mastering the complexities that frighten the broader market?
Paul’s answers were candid, direct, and firmly grounded in PCM’s nine-year operating history — cutting through industry convention. Across five questions, he addressed the persistent gap between client expectations and portfolio reality, our firm’s unwavering stance on private credit, the strategic imperative of technology, and the greatest risk he believes clients are underestimating today.
Q: DPM flows accelerated for Paragon Capital in 2025, largely driven by existing clients increasing allocations. Can you give us more context on the business?
Paragon Capital Management is, at its core, a discretionary portfolio management boutique — deliberately lean, operating with a team of fewer than thirty people. Since our founding in 2017, every single dollar entrusted to us has been managed on a fully discretionary basis. That model has never changed, and neither has our conviction in it.
What has evolved is the scale of confidence that clients are placing in what we do. As of December 2025, our assets under management have grown at a compound annual rate of approximately 27% since inception. That is not an accident. It reflects the consistency of our process, the trust we have built with our clients over time, and a growing recognition — across Singapore and the broader region — that independent, fully discretionary management is a proposition whose time has well and truly come.
We continue to see consistent inflows from both existing clients deepening their allocations and new prospects who are increasingly looking for a manager whose interests are fully aligned with theirs.
Q: Do you still see gaps between client expectations and portfolio reality?
Short answer — yes. In our experience, it is fairly clear that many clients who wish to delegate their portfolio management to an asset manager, whether independent or at a bank, primarily look at the bottom line: performance. If we can deliver that performance, then I believe the DPM proposition, viewed simply as a product, will continue to develop and grow.
But the key question is this: what is your bottom line? Are you actually delivering the value your clients expect?
At Paragon Capital, we address this directly. We are very transparent with every client or prospect who sits with us to discuss a mandate. Depending on the type of mandate they wish us to manage, we revert with a very clear number — the net-of-fee return we expect to deliver over the relevant time horizon. No ambiguity, no hedging. That, to me, cuts to the chase. It is how we keep the conversation honest from day one.
Q: What is your priority going into the next phase?
It is clearly a priority for us to further enhance our technology and systems platform. Today, all of us in the industry are well aware of the capabilities and potential of artificial intelligence — for investment research, portfolio monitoring, client communication, and operational efficiency. As an asset manager with a deliberately lean team, we genuinely need to leverage what technology has to offer — as widely, as extensively, and as quickly as we can.
Only then will we be able to add the requisite value that we believe our clients deserve going forward. For a firm of our size to compete at the level we do, technology is not optional. It is existential. The question is not whether to invest in it, but how quickly we can do so without compromising the quality and rigour that define how we manage money.
Q: What is your view on private credit?
To be very candid: as far as our asset allocation is concerned today, at the firm level, we have zero allocation to private credit. Zero. Since inception. The returns we have delivered to our clients since we launched — none of that has been contributed by private credit. Not a single dollar.
The reason is straightforward. The level of transparency within each potential investment that we are pitched — and we are pitched frequently — is, frankly, opaque. I continue to find it genuinely difficult to obtain a sufficient level of visibility to satisfy myself that, as a steward of my clients’ wealth, I can responsibly deploy their capital into this space.
My duty to my clients requires that I understand what I own on their behalf. If I cannot gain adequate visibility into an investment structure, then I cannot fulfil that duty. That is not a commentary on private credit as an asset class in the abstract. It is a reflection of where we stand as a fiduciary. No offence to the private credit proponents in the room — but that is how we see it, and that is how we will continue to see it until the standards of transparency meaningfully improve.
Q: What is the risk today that you think clients are underestimating?
To be perfectly candid, there are a few things that come to mind. But if you ask me to name one: when I interact with our clients, the greatest risk I observe is the risk of them making the wrong decision. Not the market making the wrong move — the client.
This is why we spend, conservatively, around 40% of our time on what I would call client stewardship — keeping communication channels open, ensuring clients remain informed, and, when necessary, telling them: look, if the noise on television is becoming too much, switch it off. Because resilience, to me, is not about having the most sophisticated hedging strategy. Resilience is the ability to stay convicted in your process and the patience to remain invested when fear is loudest.
Our own baptism of fire was not the volatility of recent months. It was COVID19 — specifically, those initial weeks in early 2020 when markets moved in one direction and the instinct to exit was overwhelming. We stayed the course. We persevered. To this day, that remains our point of reference. If we do not return to that level of fear, we are in manageable territory. If we do — we have already been there once, and we came through it.
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Credit: Asian Private Banker