What do you think gave you the competitive edge this year?
Our focus has always been on listening to clients and colleagues to develop bespoke, tailored and appropriate best-in class solutions, and that’s definitely shone through over the past two years of disruption as we’ve looked to adapt and respond to a rapidly changing environment.
We’ve also placed a focus on managing and motivating the team. That’s been really important, especially with remote working rapidly become the norm. We’ve been agile in our approach, ensuring that colleagues are supported and engaged, being flexible to their needs. Ultimately, our people are our key differentiator, and I’ve been fortunate to have played a part in delivering our learning and development program and our return to work and agile working policy in response to the pandemic.

Describe how your colleagues make a difference to your organisation?
Our combined success is really all about investment in our people and supporting each other – recognising and respecting our strengths, enabling career progression, offering training to open up new skills development opportunities and embedding new technologies to help us support clients. Again, remaining agile has been a fundamental part of our mutual success – it encourages us to work together and ensures we are ready to respond to the changing needs of clients.

Please describe the challenges you needed to surmount to reach your standard?
Keeping the team motivated and engaged was a significant challenge over the past year or so, given the shift to remote working. Finding creative ways to bring together the team remotely was critical. From a client perspective, face to face meetings were of course not possible either, and we adopted a flexible, creative approach to keep in touch with them. The key was to be proactive and we are actually now seeing an appetite for hybrid means of communication, both in person and virtually, to suit client needs.

How did your firm react to the pandemic and what lasting changes do you expect from this period. What might not last?
We were highly responsive to the pandemic – our technology infrastructure was already in place and able to accommodate agile working. A major and lasting outcome, though, has been the heightened focus on colleague support and staff wellbeing. Those are areas where I think we will definitely see a lasting legacy.

What do you see as the prospects for wealth management in general?
The world is definitely becoming more complex and the coming years will undoubtedly bring increased layers of complication, in a regulatory and legislative sense and in terms of geopolitical disruption. This greater complexity will mean that listening to client needs will become more important than ever, particularly as they
move into areas like crypto currencies and digital assets, and as families focus more on succession and legacy planning and the needs of the next generation.

Whom do you look to for inspiration and ideas?
Our belief in the value of mentoring is really important, and I’ve been very fortunate to have had a mentor who has vast amounts of industry experience and is extremely well respected. Getting that sort of advice and guidance has been inspirational and instrumental in terms of my own progress.

What do you hope will be the result of receiving this accolade?
Recognition through these awards is essentially recognition for the team as a whole. To know that we are doing the right thing collectively for clients is really pleasing.

“Recognition through these awards is essentially recognition for the team as a whole.”

A member of the Crestbridge executive team, Heather also manages the US joint venture, Crestbridge Fiduciary LLC.  One of the most awarded executives in Jersey’s financial sector, Heather is a consistent feature on ePrivateclient’s Top 50 Most Influential list and in 2021 topped the Women in Wealth Management category in the WealthBriefing European Awards.

As Group Head of a professional services organisation, emphasising the importance of building trusted relationships is central to Heather’s leadership philosophy.  She vigorously encourages joined-up and far-sighted thinking throughout her team and promotes regular and open feedback from across the business to nurture a supportive and high-performance culture.

Who has inspired you?

Leading international private client lawyer Richard Hay taught me many important lessons; one of the key ones was that preparation is everything!

I recently read Edith Edgar’s ‘The Choice’.  It tells the true story of an Auschwitz survivor who trained to be a psychiatrist and is a study of resilience and self-determination. Her ethos is that everyone has the choice whether to be a victim or a survivor.

How would you describe your leadership style in three words?

Collaborative, supportive, open.

What makes a successful leader?

Empathy.  I believe in every scenario it is essential to put yourself in the shoes of the person or team you are working with or leading.

What advice would you give to aspiring leaders?

Follow your gut instincts, treat everything as an opportunity to learn and don’t let ‘perfect’ obstruct progress.  Things sometimes go wrong.  When they do, rise, reflect and move forward.

A member of the Crestbridge executive team, Heather also manages the US joint venture, Crestbridge Fiduciary LLC.  One of the most awarded executives in Jersey’s financial sector, Heather is a consistent feature on ePrivateclient’s Top 50 Most Influential list and in 2021 topped the Women in Wealth Management category in the WealthBriefing European Awards.

As Group Head of a professional services organisation, emphasising the importance of building trusted relationships is central to Heather’s leadership philosophy.  She vigorously encourages joined-up and far-sighted thinking throughout her team and promotes regular and open feedback from across the business to nurture a supportive and high-performance culture.

Who has inspired you?

Leading international private client lawyer Richard Hay taught me many important lessons; one of the key ones was that preparation is everything!

I recently read Edith Edgar’s ‘The Choice’.  It tells the true story of an Auschwitz survivor who trained to be a psychiatrist and is a study of resilience and self-determination. Her ethos is that everyone has the choice whether to be a victim or a survivor.

How would you describe your leadership style in three words?

Collaborative, supportive, open.

What makes a successful leader?

Empathy.  I believe in every scenario it is essential to put yourself in the shoes of the person or team you are working with or leading.

What advice would you give to aspiring leaders?

Follow your gut instincts, treat everything as an opportunity to learn and don’t let ‘perfect’ obstruct progress.  Things sometimes go wrong.  When they do, rise, reflect and move forward.

The makeup of today’s high net worth families has changed considerably compared to that of previous generations. Larger family units, consisting of multiple branches all differing in ages, in multiple jurisdictions and pursuing multiple interest, creates significant challenges particularly when varying perspectives, visions and objectives collide.

Consequently, a focus on operating cohesively and seeking collective agreement prior to making decisions has become paramount. In addition, there has been a rise in developing multiple, concurrent investment and wealth planning paths to satisfy differing objectives.

As a result – and as recent discussions at Jersey Finance’s Dubai conference showed – the nextgen is increasingly seeking to incorporate robust governance into the management of a family’s collective wealth and business interests, with a view to providing a supportive framework to help the interplay of these often complex family dynamics. This is a trend that is playing out particularly strongly in the Middle East, where the values and visions of previous generations can be juxtaposed with the rapidly evolving ambitions and values of the nextgen.

Making their own way in the world

The nextgen forging their own path and fulfilling the expectations and obligations of the previous generation can be a significant challenge. Key decisions include; the right time to assume control of the family’s wealth from the first generation; how to fully assert control and what direction to take in relation to management and custodianship of the wealth.

The above can include a desire to establish their own career independently or in tandem with the inherited wealth.  Assuming responsibility can often come with a greater focus on exercising personal vision, albeit balanced against any commitment towards the previous generation.

Defining this personal vision is a key first step. This is frequently followed by implementing a framework, often using a tested structure, to help implement a new vision alongside that of the previous generation. Such a framework can also help to manage potential conflict between the new approach and the existing one.

A final challenge can be seen when a nextgen individual, reluctant to take stewardship of wealth from the previous generation, is prematurely forced to do so. In these circumstances, it is critical that a structure with the appropriate framework exists to help and support them.

Beyond the nextgen

What’s clear is that families with a Middle East nexus are increasingly complex and sophisticated, and while larger families with diversified interests present significant challenges for family office practitioners, they also create opportunities.

For families themselves, having conversations early to establish internal frameworks and networks of trusted advisors is critical.

At the same time, for service providers and the IFCs that house them, taking a digital-first approach, understanding the need for multi-platform communication demands, and providing access to specialist, tailored expertise will be vital if they are to continue to support and anticipate the rapidly changing needs of the Middle East nextgen and beyond.

This article was first published on theWealthNet click here.