Health Benefits, Tailored

CXA’s Rosaline Koo lives and breathes her app, which is set to revolutionise health management.

- Peter Yeo

To prepare herself for the day, Rosaline Koo turns to the pool. Swimming helps to clear her head, says the chief executive officer of CXA Group. “I swim five to seven days a week for at least 40 minutes to an hour. It is very relaxing. I work through issues in my mind.”

For help in monitoring her stress levels – not to mention overall organisation of her life – she’s got the CXA app, the raison d’etre of her company. “I use the app to track my steps, take my pulse, and log my food and caffeine intake. I use it when I have to see the doctor (it’s also the company’s medical card) and, occasionally, when I don’t feel like swimming, I look for classes like yoga, or I book time with a chiropractor for my back. I also get my blood test results on it,” she says.

HIGH-FLYING PERSONALITY

To say stress is part and parcel of Koo’s life is an understatement. Her rise from the ghetto of Los Angeles, a bullied Chinese kid in an all-black neighbourhood, is well documented. She began working at just nine years old and by the time she finished University of California with a degree in cybernetics, she had been through several leadership positions. Since her graduation from Columbia Business School in 1998, she has occupied executive roles in large corporations and multi-nationals such as insurance firm ACE (now, Chubb) and employee-benefits consultant Mercer Marsh Benefits. She also founded two startups in between her corporate roles when she came to Asia as part of the dotcom boom.