Our Story
Formed around a
single question
What does it actually take to understand whether dividend investing belongs in a personal portfolio — before you commit to it?
Back to HomeOur Beginning
How Koi Reserve came to exist
Koi Reserve was founded in Hong Kong in 2018 by a small group of educators and financial practitioners who kept encountering the same concern: working adults in their 40s and 50s had accumulated savings, had started thinking about the years ahead, and were genuinely curious about income-focused investing — but found that the available material was either too basic or too sales-adjacent.
Most of what existed was either introductory content that stopped before things got interesting, or it was positioned around specific products. There was very little that treated the learner as a capable adult who wanted to understand the mechanics, weigh the trade-offs, and decide for themselves.
The name Koi Reserve comes from the image of a garden pond — still on the surface, with considerably more movement underneath. It felt like an apt description of good long-term financial thinking: patience on the outside, careful attention beneath.
Our Mission
What we are here to do
Our mission is to offer structured, honest education about dividend investing to people in Hong Kong who are approaching the stage where income from a portfolio becomes a meaningful question.
We do not recommend specific securities, manage money, or carry any advisory licence. What we do is teach — carefully, in small cohorts, using material built for the Hong Kong context and written for people who want to think, not be told what to do.
"The goal is not to produce investors who follow a system. It is to produce learners who understand their own situation well enough to reason through it."
— Founding principle, Koi Reserve
The Team
The people behind the courses
Winston Lau
Lead Educator
Spent 18 years in institutional equity research before moving into financial education. Leads the pre-retirement programme and writes the core curriculum across all three courses.
Serena Chan
Programme Director
Background in adult learning design and professional development. Shapes how material is sequenced and paced so that participants build understanding rather than simply accumulate information.
Daniel Yuen
Facilitator & Research
Focuses on the Hong Kong-specific elements of the curriculum — including local tax treatment, MPF considerations, and the particular behaviour of HK-listed companies with regard to dividends.
How We Work
Standards we hold ourselves to
Intellectual honesty
We present both the appeal and the limitations of dividend investing. If something is contested or depends heavily on individual circumstances, we say so.
No conflicts of interest
We do not receive fees from product providers, fund managers, or brokerages. Course fees are the entirety of our revenue, which means our interests align with yours.
Small cohort design
Cohorts are deliberately small so that participants can ask questions, engage with the material at depth, and have meaningful interaction with facilitators.
HK-grounded content
The curriculum is written for Hong Kong residents. Tax treatment, local listed company behaviour, and the MPF as context all feature in how we explain things.
Privacy of participants
Personal financial information shared during courses remains within the cohort. Facilitators hold this to a professional standard of discretion.
Regular curriculum review
Materials are updated at least annually to reflect changes in dividend policies, tax rules, and market conditions relevant to HK-based investors.
Our Approach
Dividend education built for the mid-career investor in Hong Kong
The investors who take our courses are typically somewhere between their mid-40s and their late 50s. They have been accumulating savings for some time — through MPF contributions, personal portfolios, or both — and are beginning to think about what the shape of their financial life looks like in the decade ahead. Dividend investing surfaces as a question for many of them, often because they have read about it, heard it discussed, or noticed it in their existing holdings.
What they often lack is a framework. They know what a dividend is. They have seen the yield figures. But they have not had the chance to think through questions like: how does a dividend relate to total return? What does a sustainable payout ratio look like, and how do I read one? What happens when a company cuts its dividend, and how common is that among HK-listed names? These are the questions our courses are built to address — patiently, in sequence, with room for participants to work through their own uncertainties.
Ready to start?
A conversation costs nothing
If you are unsure which course fits your current stage or would like to discuss the material before enrolling, write to us. We will respond with honest guidance.
Get in Touch