Career Path: Flying to Monaco and Geneva
Rehmet Kassim-Lakha is a private banker at JPMorgan in London. After graduating in economics from Durham University, she joined the bank as a trainee analyst in 1997, and has spent time working in Paris and London. She says career success comes from being open about your aspirations.
I wasn't born to be a private banker. As a child, growing up in Belgium, I thought I might be an architect. But I suppose you could say my fate was sealed when I opted to study economics instead of architecture for my degree.
It was at university in Durham that I decided to pursue banking as a career. Many of my friends were also interested in working in the City of London, so we gave each other moral support during the interview process.
It was luck rather than design that brought me a job in private banking. JPMorgan had made a presentation at Durham, and after attending I applied to work in the bank's institutional asset management division with a view to becoming a fund manager.
However, at that time the private bank was growing fast and somehow my CV arrived on their desk. I was invited to interview and then offered a position on the private banking graduate programme.
Because I grew up in Belgium in an English-speaking household with Indian parents, I speak fluent French, English, and Hindi, and can just about mumble in Italian. My language skills have been a distinct advantage in my career. I think they helped me secure the role at JPMorgan and when I arrived, fluency in French meant I was able to go immediately to Paris for three months.
Working in Paris was very exciting. JPMorgan's office is a beautiful old building in Place Vendôme. Working there satisfied my architectural as well as my banking interests. What's more, the food was delicious!
The Paris office needed an extra pair of hands and as an analyst, my role was to chip in wherever I could. This entailed helping prepare presentations and, letters, getting to know the people who work there and more. It was busy and daunting, but meant I learnt how the bank worked very quickly.
Three months later, in 1998, I came back to London as an analyst in the private bank's investments group, in the part of the team that advises clients how to manage their money on a non-discretionary basis. Unlike discretionary money management, where clients sign over the decisions about managing their money to their bankers, the advisory group works with clients who retain ultimate decision-making power themselves.
In November, I went to New York to attend JPMorgan's analyst training programme. This was also very exciting: all the new graduate trainees at JPMorgan, whether they're based in Singapore or Brazil and whether they're working in private banking or bond sales, attend the programme. It's a great opportunity to meet people from all across the firm and create a network that stays with you. We stayed in Battery Park City, just next to Wall Street.
I stayed in New York for a month and learned a lot about the financial products used by JPMorgan. When I came back, I continued working in the investment advisory group of the private bank and stayed there for the next five years, until 2003. I was fortunate to be sent back to New York during that time on the Associates Training Programme, which lasted about two months.
During those five years, I learned a lot about private banking in what were very difficult market conditions. At the start, I worked closely with a mentor who was always available to help me with queries or to listen to my point of view. He taught me the importance of telling my managers what my career expectations are: otherwise, he said, they have no way of assessing my needs.
With this in mind, in 2002 I asked my boss for additional responsibility. He put me in charge of communicating about our advisory business to people from Fleming during the integration between JPMorgan and Chase Fleming Private Wealth Management, which was acquired by JPMorgan in 2001. It meant I got to know a lot of new people from Fleming and the whole new market of Fleming's UK clients opened up to me.
In January 2003, a need arose in Geneva for me to go and help out on the hedge fund advisory desk. This was a fascinating experience that gave me exposure to an asset class that is, to say the least, fascinating!
When I got back, my mentor invited me to join him as relationship banker in the private bank, pitching for business with new clients. I agreed, and switched from the 'investing' side of the bank, where you help clients invest their money, to the relationship side, where you bring in new business to the bank and help clients devise the planning strategies behind their wealth.
In my current role I cover two types of client: 'UK resident non-domiciles', meaning non-UK nationals who settle in the UK; and clients based in Belgium, Switzerland and Monaco.
My day is now so different from my previous role. I deal with different requests and ideas every minute of the day, which is particularly interesting. Our clients are all ultra-high net worth individuals, with more than $25 million, and they are all very different. Some have started businesses from scratch, others have inherited their wealth and others have started with a little bit of wealth and built it up.
They usually have interesting ideas about what they want to do with their money, from giving some to their children, to donating some to philanthropic causes.
My role is to help them articulate and plan what they want to do with their wealth, and then to implement their ideas. It involves a lot of listening and a fair amount of travelling: last week I was in Monaco, next week I'll probably be in Geneva!
