Citywealth Leaders List, 60 seconds interview – Sarah Sarwar, Broadfield
This week’s 60 seconds Citywealth Leaders List interview is dedicated to Sarah Sarwar, Partner at Broadfield.
Tell Citywealth readers a bit about your role.
I am a partner in the Private Wealth team at Broadfield. My practice focuses on advising high-net-worth individuals, families, trustees, and family offices on all aspects of wealth planning, including estate and succession planning, tax-efficient structuring, trust administration, and cross-border wealth transfer.
A significant part of my role is helping clients think strategically about the future: how to protect wealth, how to pass it on responsibly, and how to ensure that the structures they put in place reflect both their objectives and their family values.
What does a typical day look like for you?
No two days are the same, which is one of the things I love about my work. A day might begin with a call with a client about succession planning, followed by reviewing trust documentation, and then working with our tax or corporate teams on a wider family or business structuring matter. It is a constant balance of technical legal advice, client relationship management, and long-term strategic thinking.
Tell us about some recent, interesting client instructions/requests you have received.
One particularly interesting matter involved advising on the administration of a substantial estate with assets spread across multiple jurisdictions, including property and investment holdings overseas. The work required close coordination with accountants, foreign advisers and executors to navigate succession issues, tax reporting obligations and the practical challenges of dealing with assets in different legal systems. Matters like this highlight how important it is to bring together the right team of advisers to achieve a smooth outcome for the family.
What challenges do your clients face and how are you helping your clients to overcome them?
Many clients are operating in an increasingly complex regulatory and tax environment, particularly where their personal, business, or family interests span multiple jurisdictions.
My role is to help clients take a holistic and forward-looking approach. That means anticipating issues before they become problems, coordinating advice across jurisdictions and disciplines, and putting in place structures that are robust enough to provide certainty but flexible enough to evolve as circumstances change.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
On a professional level, joining Broadfield as a partner has been a very proud milestone. It feels like the right platform for the kind of thoughtful, ambitious, and deeply personal private client practice I am always striving to build.
What do you consider to be the most important attributes for a leader?
Listening is fundamental. The best leaders I have worked with are genuinely curious about the people around them and take the time to understand different perspectives.
Clarity of communication is also essential, as is the ability to trust and empower your team. In private client work, where we are often dealing with sensitive family dynamics and emotionally charged issues, calm judgment and empathy are especially important.
Who do you most admire and why?
I admire a senior solicitor who supervised me early in my career. His technical ability was exemplary, but what stayed with me was his quiet recognition that, in private client work, technical excellence is simply the entry point. What distinguished him was his judgment, discretion, and instinctive understanding of people, particularly in moments of complexity or vulnerability. It reinforced for me that the real measure of a trusted adviser lies in how those qualities are brought to bear in practice.
Where was the last place you travelled to for work or pleasure?
I spent a week in Santorini, Greece. It is an extraordinarily beautiful place. The whitewashed villages, the deep blue sea, and the picturesque views are every bit as striking as people say. It was exactly the kind of reset you need every now and then.
If you weren’t in this industry, what else might you be doing?
Had I not gone into law, I suspect I would have gravitated towards a career in psychology. I have always been interested in understanding people -how they think, what shapes their decisions, and how they respond in different situations. That curiosity has always felt quite instinctive for me and is something I enjoy exploring.
How do you relax after a long day?
A long walk somewhere green, or gardening usually helps me decompress and clear my head. After a particularly intense week, cooking on my AGA is my reset, there’s something meditative about focusing on something entirely different.
Broadfield’s Citywealth Leaders List profile
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