Charlotte Murtagh is a Director at ZEDRA Group, an international provider of Global Expansion, Active Wealth and Fund solutions. Charlotte’s journey to ZEDRA started in 1992 when she joined Deloitte aged just 17. Over the course of three decades and three buy-outs, Charlotte went on to become a Manager at Walbrook, Vice President at Barclays and finally, Director at ZEDRA. An environment she describes as being a “business within a business”. Charlotte’s loyalty and commitment to change has allowed extraordinary career diversity all within one organisation and she shares her story with Agreus here for Trust Professionals and Family Offices to see the value of change.
DELOITTE
My career started in 1992, almost accidentally. My mum, being the woman she is, applied for a ‘proper’ job on my behalf at Deloitte, I got the job and never looked back.
In the early 90’s, as a trainee, all you ever really did was sit by somebody and soak it all up. For a long time, I was the photocopier and tea person, I sat and I listened.
In 2004 Deloitte submitted to the SEC pressure and offered their four office CSP business for sale. This was a wonderful opportunity for the senior team and a small group of key people to form a consortium and buy out the business, with the help of Private Equity. At that time, CSP’s were not often traded so this was quite the change and what they were able to achieve financially was an incredible accomplishment.
WALBROOK
The next three years in Walbrook taught me a lot about building a brand, the importance of good contacts and I started to realise even more the correlation between high service standards and new business referrals. I think it is fair to say that the announcement some three years later that we had been sold to Barclays Bank came as shock to all, nobody could understand why the senior management group wanted to step away from this tremendous new independent world, as a business Walbrook was such a great opportunity and we were only getting started.
BARCLAYS
It was a completely different world. The solutions being marketed were foreign to us in the sense they focussed on succession rather than Walbrook which was almost entirely corporate transactional. The clients were predominantly international unlike Walbrook which was UK focussed and the value of assets under management were in some cases in excess of the entire Walbrook balance sheet.
I soon found that my strong client relationships meant I also had opportunity. I could bring to the table which bought me friends within the bank who had equally interesting opportunities for me. As someone who had grown up in a local CSP environment often with clients who had advisers and bankers in situ, this brought an entirely new dimension to my role. I soon began to realise the massive power in partnering with my banking colleagues to develop business.
ZEDRA
I remember the moment everything changed for me. We were sitting around a table with a client, a phenomenally wealthy family and they turned to me asked me what I thought. I felt my leg go under the table because having worked with that family and the banking team for a number of years already I realised that I had now achieved a position of confidence with the family and acceptance within their trusted team of advisers. A good friend of mine told me that it takes five years for a family to trust you, I never believed him until that day.
IN-HOUSE VS OUTSOURCED
There reached a point where I was so close to these families that they asked me to join them in-house and I thought about it. I thought about it deeply but then I realised if I did, it would be only in my best interest, not theirs. I knew that I could not add value to a Family Office as just me, leaving my network behind me to go “in house” would impact my existing clients and the Zedra proposition I had spent many years building. I desperately needed good strong and caring administration teams, specialist colleagues who can guide me technically and who can add value to the clients I work with and most importantly I needed the geographical reach to do my job properly.
ADVICE TO THE NEXT GENERATION OF TRUST PROFESSIONALS
In an environment of constant change, it is all too easy to continue down the path of least resistance but when you spend so much of your life working why not embrace the change, find the weak points, exploit the opportunity and most importantly “fit in” and make the best of something or immediately remove yourself and find a challenge that is more in keeping with your mindset.
Change is not always a bad thing; change is positive and will always bring with it an experience that you can draw from whether that is good or indeed bad. Life is hard and I do not think we should expect to get everything when we have not contributed anything. I also do not think we should ever be scared of learning or asking questions and I think we should always be thankful and humble for the experiences that life passes us. Working is not a waste of a life; working is life.
ADVICE FOR FAMILY OFFICES
Personalities are important for Family Offices too. Finding the right team is an essential element of any Trustee selection process. In addition assessing the global reach and the ability for a Trust business, whilst international to move quickly is key to ensuring that deliverable deadlines are met. Too many businesses are not international enough or too large for a team to be able to problem solve independently and deliver that solution quickly.
At Zedra, the entrepreneurial nature of the company and the commerciality of the decision makers who define our direction is what makes us different. That and the fact that we are very collaborative internationally making us flexible and friendly to use as well as employing a team of genuinely lovely people.