25 Aug 2026

Eastspring Investments accelerates AI-powered investing with appointment of Yaqin Zhou

Yaqin Zhou will serve as Director, AI Research - Investments in the Quantitative Strategies team, a newly created role

SINGAPORE (25 August 2026) – Eastspring Investments (“Eastspring”), the USD269 billion¹ Asia-headquartered asset management business of Prudential plc, today announced the appointment of Yaqin Zhou as Director, AI Research – Investments, effective 24 August 2026, further strengthening the firm’s artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled investment capabilities. Based in Singapore, Yaqin will report to Ioannis Kampouris, Head of Quantitative Strategies.

In this newly created role, Yaqin will lead the development of AI-enabled capabilities across Eastspring’s various investment platforms, with a focus on enhancing research productivity, accelerating alpha discovery, strengthening portfolio decision-making and deepening risk insights. She will also help shape the roadmap for AI-driven investment tools and work closely with Eastspring’s investment teams, technology and governance functions to embed scalable, responsible AI solutions that support better investment outcomes for clients.

Vis Nayar, Chief Investment Officer, Eastspring Investments, said: “The industry has started to embrace AI, and it is increasingly embedded in investment research and decision-making. We have been intentionally strengthening our capability in this area, as we see significant opportunity to harness the power of AI to generate differentiated insights and support better investment outcomes for our clients. Yaqin brings a unique combination of investment, quantitative research and AI expertise, and her appointment reflects our continued commitment to building a differentiated and future-ready investment platform.”

Yaqin joins Eastspring from Allianz Global Investors, where she served as Director for Global Equity AI and led the development of AI-driven capabilities across investment research, portfolio analytics, ESG intelligence and earnings forecasting. Prior to this, she held data science and AI roles at Nomura, Lazada and various research institutions in Singapore.

Yaqin holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and has authored multiple research papers in AI, machine learning and optimisation.

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