Spotlight | Annamaria Koerling

Walking into C Hoare & Co in London is like stepping back in time. Muskets hang in the entrance halls, grand family portraits adorn the walls and its banking hall is straight out of a storybook. Hundreds of archived ledgers line a long corridor while the museum houses records of an old world where female staff were given special contracts and were only allowed to work until they got married.

But a 341-year-old organisation has to evolve, and behind its nostalgic exterior, changes have been made. Today, the bank's senior management includes four women: two partners, one non-executive and head of wealth management Annamaria Koerling, who was recently named a luminary in her field.

Koerling appreciated the recognition. C Hoare & Co is progressive, she says, but women are generally underrepresented in senior management and the industry has a long way to go.

"I don't think we can be prescriptive, I don't think quotas work. It's about women learning to help each other, the mentoring and the training. I think it's generally true, and I see it in myself, that women are quite bad at asking for what they want," she says. "You must put yourself forward in the workplace. But you definitely should be yourself. You're not a man in a man's world. You're a woman in finance."

Koerling says progress will stem from individuals' confidence. She knowingly joined the male-dominated private banking sector more than 20 years ago and recalls doing little to compete. That was until her boss at Schroders, Frank Marshall, questioned why she was quiet in meetings. Admitting that she didn't know as much as her male counterparts, he said they were actually just bluffing.

"Men are much better at winging it and are more confident in these situations. As for a lot of women, I needed to know I was 100 per cent sure of my subject," she says. "But it limits your development and limits people's perceptions of you. It's not that you know less, so you need to be a bit braver."

Career ladder

• 1990 Graduate role, Morgan Stanley
• 1991 Joined Schroders Private Bank
• 1997 Promoted to executive director at Schroders Private Bank
• 2003 Head of international portfolio management, Cazenove Capital Management
• 2007 Head of international portfolio management team, Merrill Lynch
• 2010 Head of wealth management, C Hoare & Co

Quick thinking

The young Koerling was clearly capable, notably impressing the bank with her language skills. She remembers the interview - during which Marshall lit up a pipe - and being ostensibly tested afterwards when he suddenly struck up a conversation in German while walking her to the lift. It's a technique she has since adopted, one of many lessons learned from her early mentor.

"You develop strategies that work for you and it takes a while to sort out and learn them," she says. "I think once you build your internal network and your knowledge, there comes a point when all of a sudden you think, 'Yes, I feel comfortable.' It's not that I know everything, but I feel comfortable."

Wealth management was always an option for Koerling. She had an interest in maths and her multicultural European roots influenced her love of languages, which she studied at Cambridge. Both disciplines informed her career path. "I really wanted to do something that was more personal, more solution-driven, that combined finance with that really important communicational aspect. It took me pretty quickly into private wealth management because it's what you do every day.

"You engage with people, you get to know them, you try to find out what they're trying to achieve, what makes them tick, what types of solutions are going to work for them because it's an intensely personal thing. Then you apply the science of investing and all your knowledge about tax to make sure you construct the most efficient thing," ?she says.

Koerling did consider the high-octane trading environment and weighed up the options with her partner. The financial incentives were comparatively not as good in wealth management but her choice offered better stability and reward balance. Money was never a driver. What has always kept Koerling motivated are variety, challenge and the opportunity to make a difference, all factors that C Hoare & Co gave her.

Perfect role

Headhunted in 2010 by CEO Jeremy Marshall, Koerling says she landed the position she'd been training for all her life. "I find this job endlessly fascinating because, of course, markets change, your clients change, tax changes, so there's always some new feature to get to ?grips with."

She adds: "When I started out, private client wealth management was quite a simple thing: you bought equities and government bonds and you talked to your clients about it and made changes.

"And then, of course, when derivatives really became more sophisticated and investment banking started packaging things up, somehow private clients got to the point where you needed to have these things to make sure you were getting proper fund management. Investments got more complex, markets got more volatile and that culminated in the 2008 issues.

"Now it feels like we've gone full circle again, partly with the help of regulation and the suitability rules. There are 42 regulations between the EU and the UK coming in the next three years - and we all have FATCA.

"I think there's going to be a huge standardisation of the data that we hold for our clients. The danger is that people tick boxes rather than focusing on the really important things."

And while the Retail Distribution Review has generally been a good thing, Koerling is concerned about the advice gap lower down the market and the trend towards self-directed investment. "All the studies tell you the more often you look at your portfolio, the more likely you are to take too little risk, funnily enough, and make the wrong decisions," she says. "We provide that key emotional distance between a client and their money and because they trust us to do a good job then they're more likely to stay the course and stay invested, which is generally the right outcome."

Calming waters

Beyond the noise of professional life, Koerling seeks downtime in an extreme environment - the ocean. Although there "is never a chink in her working day", she has honed her work/life balance and enjoys scuba diving (she is working towards her master scuba qualification).

"Of course it's complete silence under water and you're totally focused on what you're doing," she says. "It's the time when I completely switch off from all the other everyday things."

Koerling snatches the chance to scuba dive on her many travels to visit myriad relatives and friends around the world - she's heading to Tonga next year to swim with humpback whales to celebrate her eldest daughter's 18th birthday.

Family is as much a priority as career and she credits the equal partnership with her husband as helping her success. It's something Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg underscored in her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, and she advises her contemporaries to follow suit.

"I see lots of my peers and women I grew up with who, over the years, have thrown in the towel and I think it is generally because they can't juggle family life. They might take their career break, which means they get a step behind," she says.

"Build your network professionally, so you've always got people to call. Don't be afraid to ask for a mentor because it's not always offered. And build your network at home too because the point at which you have a family you need that emergency support, so again you need to help each other there as well."

 

Jennifer Palmer-Violet is acting editor of Private Client Adviser