Deriv is one of the only brokers that has gone to Vanuatu and actually set up an office, as opposed to just meeting the local regulatory requirements and hiring a couple of local compliance people.
When TradeInformer was in Vanuatu, we caught up the with the company’s local Head of Office Dominic Dabu.
Can you give some background on yourself and how you got into this industry?
Deriv is actually the first company in this industry I worked for. I moved to Dubai to look for a job and ended up working at Deriv in 2020. I started out as a customer service agent and actually didn’t know anything about trading. But I became very interested in it and learned a lot. So after a year or so I became a trainer for other people in customer service and then the Training Team Lead.
And how did you end up here in Vanuatu?
Deriv has offices all over the world and part of being Trading Lead meant I had to go to all of those different places to train staff, so I was used to travelling.
One thing is that it’s hard to find people who want to take on a challenge like this. But I’d been in Dubai for a few years, I was used to travelling, so when the CEO came and said, ‘hey, we’re opening an office in Vanuatu, do you want to go and mange it?’, I just thought, ‘why not?’.
I think if someone said ‘do you want to go to Cyprus or the UK?’ it would be a bit daunting. It feels like that would be amplified by about 1,000x if someone asked if you wanted to move here. Was that the case?
Not really actually. I am from the Philippines, so I’m used to ‘island life’ if you want to call it that. Dubai is also very developed, there isn’t much open space, and that can get tiring. So when they asked me, I looked at some pictures and videos, I saw the beaches, the trees, the weather, the open space, and I thought, ‘ok, it’s time for me to move’.
Many people reading will have no idea what it’s like here. Can you give some idea of what it’s like to live in Vanuatu?
One of the things that surprised me actually is the cost of living. Vanuatu is not cheap at all. So that’s one thing. You also miss some conveniences that you have somewhere like Dubai. If you go shopping, you probably need to go to a few different places to get everything you need. There is no next day delivery. Also a lot of things will just close after 19:00.
On the other hand, it sounds cheesy, but training people really became my passion. I went to our Rwanda office before this and it was really a big challenge to get people familiar with Deriv’s technology and how we do business. So it has been very rewarding to do that here. We started from scratch on every front. And because I am Office Head, I also have to manage things with the regulator, renting an office, and so on – different things that I didn’t have to previously. So professionally and personally that has been very rewarding.
Otherwise, imagine if you work in paradise, it’s genuinely like that. I was in Dubai previously and it’s very overdeveloped. There is no open space and you are always thinking about work. Here it’s island life, it’s very relaxed. Sometimes if I feel stressed or want a quick break then I’ll just walk out of the office and go look at the sea for a couple minutes. Of course, we still work really hard and get the job done but, if I compare it to Dubai, when I am done with work here, I go home, I feel totally relaxed. In Dubai you are always thinking about work.
The other positive thing is you have a great expat community here and because it’s small, you get to know people quickly. I don’t want to say it’s perfect or has no problems but if you like a laid back lifestyle, then you will enjoy it a lot here.
I’ve been here for a couple of days, and I caveat this with saying I am a city person, but do you get bored? This is not a huge place
Island life is definitely not for everyone but for me, no, it’s not boring at all – it’s the opposite. I love going to the sea, going to the beach, and doing things outdoors. This island is not that big but even then you can do something new every weekend. You also have all the other islands as well. So for that kind of outdoors lifestyle, this is the perfect place to live.
Like I said about expats, you also meet people quickly, and make friends. So there are other people who I have met already, who are on something like a similar journey to me, right? They got sent to be the country director as well for other businesses. So because it’s not a big place and you have that in common, you can end up becoming friends pretty quickly.
You’ve got a small team here now. How was it starting that? Do you have plans to grow?
When I joined here it was starting from zero, in every aspect. So I had to do all the HR and recruitment. Initially it was hard, I’ll be honest, because people here aren’t familiar with this industry. But now after a year they are doing a great job and we can see that because we measure productivity internally across all our teams. And that’s doing a lot of technical things too, like P2P, MT5 problems, payments – everything. So they’re doing great and I’m really happy about that.
Can you say why you are doing this? Nearly all the companies here have been happy just to appoint a couple of local compliance people and get a small office. Why did Deriv decide to build a proper team here?
One thing that’s great about Deriv is our diversity, it’s something the company really values, and not in a cheesy or superficial way. You know, we now have big offices in Rwanda and in Paraguay, for example. So we saw that if you put in a small amount of investment you can build, quite quickly, very strong teams across the globe.
I think the other factor was we want to take the regulatory licenses we have seriously. So instead of just having an office, [Deriv Co-CEO] Jean-Yves said, ‘ok, let’s look at the local talent, let’s hire people, and let’s see what they can do.’ So in the end we have been very happy with the decision to do it.
Do you have any plans to grow more here?
We do have plans to grow, yes. When we started, we thought we’d need at least five well-trained people to begin with, and they can then work on training the next people. So we’re definitely at that point, all the team here is now working independently, which is great.
Currently we’re looking at a new office to invest in and the plan is that it will be for at least 30 people. That will be just the start.
