60 second interview with Jan Meyer, TwinFocus
Citywealth spoke to Jan Meyer, European Head of the Portfolio Advisory Group at TwinFocus about staying on top of markets, onboarding new clients and maintaining close and regular contact with clients.
Tell me about your role.
I am the European Head of the Portfolio Advisory Group at TwinFocus looking after clients’ portfolios from an investment perspective in the London office. TwinFocus has pioneered the Multi-Single-Family Office experience and advises on over $7.5bn of assets for 40 Ultra High Net Worth professional investors and their families around the world with offices in Boston, Miami and London.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Staying on top of markets, making sure that client portfolios meet the individual investment mandate objectives, ensuring that our current chosen strategies perform according to our expectations and speaking to asset managers to identify new strategies for our client portfolios takes a good part of my time. Being in close and regular contact with our clients is crucial, so I spend time with clients discussing our house views, understanding the clients’ risk profile as well as the underlying strategies. In several cases our investment ideas have been driven by our clients due to their background in the industries they work in, it is then for us to do the due diligence and to determine what the best implementation for these ideas would be. I also attend prospective client meetings to understand the potential clients’ investment requirements.
Tell us about a recent client instruction.
We are currently in the process of onboarding a sizeable institutional investment mandate that is required to be managed according to regulatory guidelines and in general very specific mandate restrictions. This mandate originates from a corporate transaction that we have been managing for one of our clients over the last 12 months. We are proud to be able to manage such a mandate within a Family Office environment.
What challenges do your clients face and how are you helping your clients to overcome them?
Many of our clients’ wealth is tied at some point to a large extent in a private business that they have been building over decades and usually profits have been re-invested in the business. Once they start drawing larger amounts from the company via dividends or decide to sell part or the whole company, it is crucial to do this in a tax efficient way and to set up structures that help to preserve and grow the wealth for future generations and/or philanthropic purposes. For many clients, this is often the first time where they have the liquidity to invest in the financial markets. TwinFocus aims assist and advise along the way and aims to look after client’s total balance sheet. This means we manage or assist in corporate finance transactions, propose the most effective structures from a tax and governance perspective for the aggregate assets to be held as well as go through the process of determining the long-term strategic asset allocation and eventually manage the wealth on a daily basis.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
Apart from joining TwinFocus of course, I would not say that there is one single achievement that stands out on its own. Being recognized for successfully finishing a client project or getting direct positive feedback from a client for delivering or exceeding on their expectations has been and continues to be rewarding.
Who do you most admire and why?
There is nobody specific I admire however I am often impressed when learning about how some of our entrepreneurial clients and prospects have started their own or took over a small business and built it into a sizeable national or even global business. No path was the same and how they overcame obstacles they were facing makes great stories.
Favourite travel destination?
Austrian Alps, beautiful place to go in summer and winter.
Top tips for WFH?
As many have been probably experiencing themselves during the recent months, it is quite easy to move even less at home during the day than in the office. Pretty basic but to get up regularly and maybe even work standing for a while really makes a difference and taking time out to differentiate business and personal life.
If you weren’t in the wealth management industry, what else might you be doing?
Law.