Spotlight | Catherine Grum

Catherine Grum is clearly driven – she ‘winds down’ doing triathlons. When the lawyer from Derbyshire moved to London ten years ago, she wanted a compelling interest to focus her mind and keep her energised. She started on marathons. By 2008, she was representing her age group for Great Britain at the Triathlon World Championships in Vancouver.

A year later Grum made a significant turning point that catapulted her career. The 32-year-old, who has appeared on several ‘future leader’ lists, admits to being a ‘passenger’ in her early years ?of practice. But after a successful six-month secondment at Barclays in 2009 she took control. “I said, ‘Right, I’m going to take a risk. I’m going to drive for a while and see where it ?goes,’” she says.

It ended up with her staying at Barclays Wealth and Investment Management, where she now heads a team of 11 UK-international and EMEA wealth advisers, spanning London, Dubai, Geneva and Monaco offices. The move into private banking was a culture shift after cutting her teeth at a Magic Circle firm – “You have to learn a whole new set of acronyms” – but it felt like a natural progression.

Grum was sold on private wealth after working in the private client department at Allen & Overy and discovering trust law. “I wanted to ?work in a really dynamic area where I could see the impact of the work I was doing, and where you’re constantly learning about the next client or next situation.” She was given early exposure to clients through meetings, which boosted her confidence and taught ?her a valuable lesson.

“It was that level of trust that made you realise you didn’t need to know everything,” she says. “Some people ?hold themselves back because they feel they need to know all the answers, and you’re never going to get anywhere. Clients don’t think you know everything about everything and if you come ?across as acting like you do then you’re probably going to go down in their estimation rather than up.”

 

Career ladder

• 2001 Graduated with an MA (Oxon) in Jurisprudence
• 2003 Joined Allen & Overy (A&O) as a trainee
• 2004 Seconded to A&O’s Milan office
• 2005 Qualified as a solicitor and joined the private client team at A&O
• 2008 Qualified as a trust and estate practitioner with STEP
• 2009 Joined Barclays Wealth & Investment Management division as ultra high net worth wealth adviser
• 2011 Promoted to director at Barclays
• 2012 Promoted to head of wealth advisers (EMEA) at Barclays Wealth and Investment Management

Looking up

Notably, Grum had six role models in her formative years. “Someone told me to look at the partners you’re working for,” she says. “If you want to be them or a version of them in the future, that’s a great sign. If you don’t want to have their lifestyle and be them, you need to think twice.”

Without hesitation she names Clare Maurice, co-founder of Maurice Turnor Gardner, the boutique firm born out of Allen & Overy’s private client team, as a key mentor. “She’s not only a very good lawyer, she also manages the business and that’s not always something you find in a lawyer. As lots of lawyers become managers they adapt, but they don’t necessarily have any natural talent or desire for it.”

Grum always knew she would be a lawyer. It was a vocation that matched her thinking. “For me, it was a really nice way of combining the science with some of the arts. Some rules may be fixed, some are fluid and it’s how you interpret those and how you build something for a client,” she says. With encouragement from her parents, who worked in science and engineering, Grum tried law at A level. She loved it, continued her studies and never looked back.

“Law at university is quite an academic subject. It’s not necessarily setting you up to become a lawyer. But, again, I think it suited the way my brain worked. You had the cases you spent the week studying, then you had to use the cases and that knowledge-base to write an essay. But there was no right or wrong answer nine times out of ten. It was how you constructed the essay out of those building blocks, which I enjoyed.”

Although Grum still enjoys law as a foundation, it’s the business acumen she recognised in Clare Maurice that has really grabbed her. Barclays opened her eyes to strategy, management and seeing things differently. She is now building her team and is focused on understanding the psychology of her clients and anticipating their needs.

“The world is getting more and more complex, so a lot of the work we’re doing is trying to make sure clients are aware. It’s a lot of client education and I think that’s a central point, whether it’s education about things that are happening now, raising their awareness and then helping them find the right advisers to take that forward, or whether it’s educating within a family context looking at the next generation.

“And the education could be understanding what is now quite a complex financial environment, understanding themselves and looking ?at their financial personality and how they make decisions through to philanthropy and the value of their wealth and what they could do with it. It’s important already and it’s going to grow in importance.”

Grum looks to a team of in-house behavourial finance experts, who study decision-making and the impact of risk appetite through to whether clients lose sleep over investments.

“I think one of the particularly interesting elements of that analysis is around people’s willingness to delegate: whether you’re happy or not for someone else to manage your financial affairs is just as relevant if you are a lawyer advising a client and you’re giving them some quite specific actions that they need to take in order to get from A to B,” she says.

“If you took a step back and thought consciously about your client and how they might approach the advice you’re about to give, you can be more effective in making sure the important messages are delivered in the best way possible.

“Private client advisers are intuitively aware of the emotional side of clients and I think that’s what probably makes a very good adviser, someone who has emotional intelligence as well as the technical ability,” she adds. “But it tends to be a subconscious understanding. I don’t know if people necessarily take a step back and think about it.”

Jumping hurdles

Mentoring is also high on the agenda. Grum feels a responsibility to impart the sage advice she received from her managers at Allen & Overy and Barclays – and it’s particularly important for women “because there are fewer senior women role models on the whole”.

She quotes from and recommends Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s recent book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. She also lauds her firm’s in-house women’s network, which hosts events for all staff.

So, was it important that she had female mentors when she started her career? “With hindsight: yes,” she says. “At the time I just saw six very successful people. For me it didn’t matter whether you were a man or a woman, you succeeded.”

Age should not be a barrier either. Grum has risen to the top at a young age, but it’s never disadvantaged her. “I think when people first meet me, I’m not always what they expect but I’ve never had a problem once the meeting has started. Once you get into the important topics I find people trust me very quickly and very easily,” she says. “When meeting a new client, it’s important for them to know a bit about who I am. That helps me work very well with family businesses and second generations.”

Grum continues to strategically steer her career, developing her role as team leader, and working heavily with colleagues on client service and joining things together in a way that is meaningful. “Wherever you work, there’s a tendency to focus on your area, your silo. [But] clients don’t compartmentalise their wealth,” she says. “Their investments are also the funds that are going to put their children through university or fund their retirement. I’m passionate about making sure we reflect that back and really think about them and where they’re going.”

Jennifer Palmer-Violet is acting editor of Private Client Adviser