Chairman & CEO I Century Financial Consultancy LLC
Century Financial Consultancy’s CEO, Bal Krishen has been making waves for decades in the financial industry as a visionary who makes unconventional moves in unlikely directions and converts them into successes.
A daring go-getter, he started his career in the company as an office assistant, and then carved a path to the very top of the industry through hard work and sheer tenacity.
He worked his way to the top of the ladder, all the while gaining a reputation for exemplary leadership.
Under Krishen’s care, Century Financial has consistently placed amongst the top of the Great Places to Work list compiled by the UAE’s leading workplace culture authority, a testimony to his exceptional people-management style.
Century Financial Consultancy was founded in 1989 to make investments across global financial markets accessible and easy to delve into for the regional investors.
With services that include investment consultancy, research and analysis, dedicated client support, it quickly established itself in the market as a dependable financial service provider.
Over the next three decades, it evolved into the region’s top investment and trading firm and chartered a course to an exceptionally prosperous future.
The company caters to customers across GCC and serves as a springboard for investors in the region looking to expand their investments across the major or global markets while maintaining high service standards.
Its success led to the formation of three subsidiary companies that offer specialised verticals. Century Private Wealth, located in the DIFC, focuses on private wealth management.
Meanwhile, Century Bank Brokers delivers incisive retail banking solutions across the UAE by partnering with local financial institutions and non-bank ing finance companies and banks.
Lastly, the brokerage firm, Century Realtors is poised to take the local real estate industry by storm through astute buying, selling and leasing of commercial and residential properties.
Wings of Passion
Krishen’s meteoric rise in Century Financial Consultancy is peppered with the rewards of staking his future on himself.
He began working there in 1999 upon meeting the Emirati Chairman and impressing him with his passionate determination to make a career for himself in the investment industry. His tenacity was rewarded with a foot in as an office assistant.
When he later got a chance to work as a junior dealer, he embraced the role wholeheartedly and poured everything into it. His eagerness to learn paved his growth within the company.
When faced with difficulties, his positive attitude didn’t let him down throughout this time. Instead, it evolved into the wings that helped him rise through the ranks to CEO and Chairman as his industriousness and passion carved the way.
The challenges and successes he faced over the years yielded fruit as his well-developed instincts helped in shaping him as the most dynamic visionaries in the region’s finance industry. His skillful guidance of a growing company in a competitive industry is a testament to Krishen’s powerful intellect.
An Eye on the Horizon
A rewarding place where the ambitious thrived, Century Financial Consultancy positioned itself as a pioneer in the financial industry in the past three decades post its inception. It developed a well-deserved reputation for conscientiousness and impeccable insight into the fluxes of the market.
Thanks to steady growth over time, the company now provides its stellar services and delivers trusted financial solutions across all notable global markets.
Under Krishen’s stewardship, the company adopted new avenues in delivering specialised solutions to its customers.
With the launch of online and over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, Century Financial Consultancy offered a new range of solutions to facilitate trade and investments in a diverse assortment of products for the local customer.
In addition, its initiation of Exchange Traded Products (ETP) further spurred an increasingly global market by providing a new level of accessibility to regional residents – from retail investors to sophisticated traders.
While the firm has fine-tuned its knack for identifying the right market trends and technology to onboard, one thing that hasn’t changed from the start is its customer-centric approach.
A deep and meticulous evaluation of regional investor behaviours and trends are the core motivators for its decisions. This focus lies at the heart of Century Financial Consultancy’s ventures into the newer and expanded product and services range, elevating investing accessibility into the new era.
Century Financial Consultancy has moved its focus from customer service to customer experience without upsetting client experiences by remaining current with innovations and changes in lifestyle.
Krishen’s personal ideology of engaging in new endeavours with a zeal for nothing less than triumph reflects in the firm’s attitude toward new verticals.
The company plans to launch Quantifier, a high• tech Al-ML-based trading algorithm platform that shares proprietary research strategies while placing data-driven quantitative analysis and strategy within reach of the investor.
This brilliance lies in the union of more than three decades of market experience with everyday tech, making it a trading powerhouse. Century also plans to unveil a next-generation trading platform specialising in modern investment products, keeping in mind the changing industry landscape and investors’ trading interests.
Burning the Midnight Oil
In a big move that changed the course of Krishen’s life forever, he left his life in India behind and moved to Dubai. Little did he know at that time that this would also go on to shape the financial industry in the MENA.
Krishen’s life was further altered by a chance meeting in the late 1990s with Century’s then Emirati Chairman, who offered him a position as an office assistant. Krishen’s narrative of how he made the most of his first chance is one of tenacity in the face of adversity.
His excitement and curiosity for how the market functioned prompted him to observe and learn from the customer service and sales teams as a rookie to the sector. With his growing knowledge of the industry, he was offered the opportunity to put it to use in a new role as a junior dealer.
Krishen would spend as much as 12-15 hours a day in the workplace, gathering every particle of knowledge he could and establishing a market awareness that would eventually prove to be a reason for his success in the financial industry.
Never one to throw away an opportunity, Krishen worked hard and delivered. At Century Financial Consultancy, he grew from strength to strength, eventually becoming the man he is today. He is a CEO and Chairman with a wealth of industry expertise and instincts that he employs every day to help the company reach new heights.