Morningstar IWD Special: Top Female Portfolio Managers in Asia

Morningstar IWD Special: Top Female Portfolio Managers in Asia

Fund research specialist Morningstar celebrates the 2026 International Women’s Day with a report on the top female portfolio managers in Asia.

The rise of female executives in the financial service sector is well-documented and this applies to fund managers in Asia.

In celebration of the 2026 International Women’s Day, Morningstar analysts identified three top female portfolio managers in the region who earned «High or Above Average People Pillar» ratings under the Morningstar Medalist Rating framework.

Julie Ho, J.P. Morgan

Julie Ho has dedicated her entire investment career to J.P. Morgan, joining the firm in New York in 2005 as an equity research analyst focused on real estate. She moved to Hong Kong in 2013 and joined the emerging-market and Asia-Pacific equities team to debut her portfolio management career with the 2013 inception of JPMorgan Asia Equity Dividend, supporting lead manager Jeffrey Roskell at the time. She was promoted to co-lead alongside Ruben Lienhard in February 2024 ahead of Roskell’s retirement. Her long involvement with the strategy, deep knowledge of the portfolio, and shared investment philosophy with her predecessor made her a capable successor. Leveraging her experience with JPMorgan Asia Equity Dividend, she was instrumental in the development and buildout of the team’s equity high-income franchise in Asia, which aims to deliver a distribution yield of 7 percent to 9 percent by investing in dividend-yielding stocks and an option overlay. Notably, JPMorgan Asian Equity High Income, which was launched in December 2023, has garnered immense investor interest.

Ho has been part of JPMorgan Asia Equity Dividend’s solid track record since its inception, and she continues to deliver since becoming co-lead in February 2024. Between Feb. 1, 2024, and Jan. 31, 2026, the strategy’s USD share class gained 26.37 percent per year, outpacing the category benchmark MSCI AC Asia Pacific ex-Japan High Dividend Yield Index by 534 basis points, ranking in the 27th percentile among Asia-Pacific ex-Japan equity income Morningstar Category peers. The outperformance was partly thanks to the managers utilizing the strategy’s flexibility to invest in quality-at-reasonable yield stocks – that is, quality-growth companies that have some sort of dividend and/or share buyback policies—to navigate growth-oriented markets. A recent example was artificial intelligence enabler SK Hynix in South Korea, which the managers purchased in late 2024 after company management committed to improving shareholder returns.

Nonetheless, the strategy remains true to its income-focused label and has consistently met the investment objective of generating a forward portfolio yield that is 30 percent higher than that of the MSCI AC Asia Pacific ex Japan Index. A top 2025 contributor was one of Ho’s favorites, Australian telecom operator Telstra, which the strategy has had an overweighting in since 2024, ahead of the stock’s rally. Ho liked it for its dominant network coverage and structural advantages that support steady growth, such as easing competitive pressure and strengthening pricing power. From an income perspective, she highlighted the potential for additional share buybacks alongside its already-attractive dividend yield of around 4 percent.

Yii Hui Wong, BlackRock

Yii Hui Wong joined BlackRock in Singapore in 2021 and boasts 23 years of investment experience. Before BlackRock, she was a portfolio manager at Nikko Asset Management, where she managed Asian fixed-income funds, including China bonds, and Asian local-currency mandates. At BlackRock, she was brought on as a China onshore market expert, co-managing BGF China Bond and BGF China Onshore Bond when it launched in 2022, as well as providing subject matter know-how for the firm’s Asia fixed income funds. Her responsibilities expanded as the team went through a tumultuous time. With former BGF China Bond comanagers Artur Piasecki and Eric Liu leaving the strategy in 2022, Wong stepped up to become the day-to-day manager. Later, Wong was also added to the roster of the flagship BGF Asian Tiger Bond following former lead Ronie Ganguly’s 2023 departure.

Meanwhile, Stephen Gough, a veteran portfolio manager at BlackRock since 2014, was appointed head of Asian credit in 2023. Gough worked closely with Wong and the rest of the team to stabilize the group and improve the investment processes. Wong is a capable China bond manager backed by a formidable 17-member Asia fixed-income research team. With the new guard having settled in and the continued strengthening of team resources, both BGF China Bond and BGF Asian Tiger Bond earned a People rating upgrade to Above Average from Average in 2025. These strategies also witnessed enhancements to their investment processes, including the introduction of stop-loss limits and increased use of portfolio hedges, aimed at helping them better navigate market volatility and illiquidity. These changes proved effective, and along with the team’s ability to venture into lower-rated credits in both the onshore and offshore markets as additional alpha levers, unlike peers who are typically more conservative, BGF China Bond’s Process rating was upgraded to Above Average from Average in 2026, on par with BGF Asian Tiger Bond’s.

Wong’s expertise in China was evident from her skillful navigation of BGF China Bond during a period of shifting interest rates, where she leveraged the fund’s flexibility to allocate between onshore and offshore Chinese bonds. In 2024, the fund benefited from her decision to invest in long-end Chinese government bonds, which rallied amid monetary easing by the central bank. After taking profits in this segment, she reallocated capital to higher-yielding US-dollar-denominated Chinese credits, increasing the fund’s exposure from roughly 50 percent at the end of 2024 to nearly 60 percent in 2025. This move, combined with her tactical allocation to convertible bonds, helped the fund rank in the 14th percentile among China bond peers in 2025, as these securities benefited from improving risk sentiment in China.

Keiko Kondo, Schroders

Industry veteran Keiko Kondo is Schroders’ head of multi-asset investments, Asia, bringing over three decades of investment experience. Before joining Schroders in Hong Kong in 2017 as deputy head, she spent 13 years at UBS Asset Management in Tokyo, London, and Hong Kong, most recently as head of multi-asset Asia-Pacific. In her current role at Schroders, a position she’s held since 2021, Kondo leads a well-resourced team of 10 multi-asset portfolio managers in Asia. This team sports an impressive 20-plus years in the industry and a decade with the firm on average. This dedicated and seasoned asset allocation group stands out from peers in Asia, and the team’s managed strategies have delivered solid results overall under Kondo’s leadership. Kondo also serves as one of the five voting members on the firm’s global asset-allocation committee and ensures that the Asia team’s trades are consistent with the global committee’s direction.

One of the largest strategies that Kondo manages is Schroder Asian Asset Income, which she took over in September 2021. Kondo is responsible for making asset-allocation calls for the strategy, while the underlying equity and fixed-income managers, Manish Bhatia and Jian An Huang, respectively, have full discretion over their respective sleeves. Over Kondo’s tenure through Jan. 31, 2026, the Hong Kong unit trust’s C Dis USD share class returned 4.18 percent, beating the category benchmark Morningstar Asia 50/50 Index by 80 basis points and ranking in the 28th percentile among Asia allocation category peers. Security selection has driven the bulk of alpha over the long term, although asset-allocation decisions have helped make a big difference during pivotal moments.

Partly reflecting the strategy’s income focus, the portfolio’s allocation to equities often ranges between 50 percent and 65 percent, slightly above the typical Asian allocation peer’s 40 percent-60 percent range. However, Kondo does not hesitate to dial back risks when the macro backdrop and fundamentals are not supportive. Case in point, she took a defensive stance in 2022 amid a backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war and aggressive rate hikes, swiftly cutting equity exposure—predominantly through the use of derivatives – to 50 percent from about 60 percent in March and kept it at around that level for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, cash temporarily surged up to 15 percent-20 percent between March and November 2022, well beyond the normal level of less than 10 percent, as the team sought to clamp down on risks. This helped cushion the strategy during the 2022 market downturn, with the C Dis USD share class outperforming the category benchmark by 118 basis points and ranking in the 20th percentile among peers despite posting an absolute loss of 14 percent.