20 for the Next 20: Spencer Dung, Westpac Wealth Partners

This “methodical” managing director and wealth management advisor is dedicated to helping people make better financial decisions.

Spencer Dung
Managing Director and Wealth Management Advisor, Westpac Wealth Partners

Spencer Dung didn’t always want to work in financial services.

His mother and grandfather worked as financial advisors and he often helped with office work like filing papers, which “wasn’t super exciting.”

“When I graduated, I just wanted to keep playing water polo,” he says.

Dung was born and raised in Honolulu and graduated from UC San Diego with a degree in economics. He also played water polo there, but since that wasn’t a feasible career, he decided he should learn about money. After all, he says, the lack of it prevented him from doing the things that he wanted to do.

His first “real job” was with a private mutual fund company on Wall Street that worked with family business owners. There, he learned that wealth management and investments are a “very small piece of somebody’s financial plan” but are important to know because they help an individual understand how to do the “less glamorous things” like budgeting and working on insurance policies, wills, trusts and taxes.

“That’s when I decided I wanted to dedicate my professional life to helping people understand that and make better financial decisions – so they don’t have to work because they had to, but they could pursue what they wanted to,” says Dung.

Now he loves working in the industry.

After six years at Foresters Financial in San Diego, Dung moved back to Hawai‘i in 2018 to be closer to family and to help the community here. As managing director and a wealth management advisor at WestPac Wealth Partners, Dung wears multiple hats: He works with clients, recruits and trains new financial advisors and oversees operations at the firm’s O‘ahu and Maui offices.

Dung gets great joy from “watching clients achieve their goals and watching advisors grow and be able to do that for others.”

Longtime friend Brett Katayama, CEO and chief estimator at J. Uno & Associates, is also Dung’s client. He appreciates Dung’s “methodical approach” to wealth management and financial education.

“His main focus is not to run the numbers and see how the numbers check out,” says Katayama. “His focus is really, ‘What do you want to accomplish?’ He cares about your goals.”

Dung wants financial education, literacy and wellness to be “accessible to everybody in the state.” Together, he says, they give people the opportunity to have successful careers and to meet their personal and financial goals.

“It’s not just about the money – it’s about taking care of our community.”