No one can say bankers lack a sense of imagination, just that they tend to reserve it for dreaming up structured derivative products or fantasising about the size of their year-end bonus.
Chen Yu-hwei, though, while still working as a high-flyer in the field of international finance, put her creative talents to better use. She wrote the award-winning Chinese martial arts story Tale of the Wanderer and the Hero, which became a runaway best seller and launched her on a second career as a popular author with a loyal readership all across Asia.
'I didn't tell my colleagues I was writing a novel,' said Ms Chen, a mother of four and one-time director of telecoms, media and technology investment banking at ABN Amro Hong Kong. 'It was very time consuming and because I wasn't working on it every day, I had to re-read the whole thing each time I started writing to make sure the story and the character of each personality were consistent.'
At roughly 800,000 words, it was considerably longer than most first novels, and involved detailed research of Chinese history, customs and sites to add interest and verisimilitude. But for Ms Chen, who is better known under her pen name of Zheng Feng, it was largely a labour of love.
Born in Taiwan, she grew up reading the Wuxia novels of Louis Cha, with whom she is now compared, but put any literary ambitions firmly on hold while studying management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then building a career with JP Morgan.
'I couldn't say that I was in love with my job or the finance industry, but it was very challenging and provided a good income,' she said. 'Since I had chosen to study in the United States, the chance of learning Chinese literature was very slim, and it was too late for me to study English literature, so I opted for something related to finance.' Having transferred to Hong Kong and married, her husband's job took the couple to London for 12 months in 1997 and, not working full time, Ms Chen wanted another outlet.