3 minute read
Habib Bank AG Zurich
A LOVE OF HELPING FAMILIES TACKLE PROBLEMS
Tim Denton, Head of Wealth Structuring, Habib Bank AG Zurich, talks to WealthBriefing Group Editor Tom Burroughes about what has led him to award-winning levels.
Tim Denton graduated as a Mechanical Engineer and served for 6 years as a commissioned officer in the Royal Engineers. He began his banking career with Citi in London in 1995. After covering multiple markets, he started to focus on MENA and he moved to Dubai with his family at the start of 2004 (still with Citi). He moved to Barclays in 2009. In 2017 Emirates NBD asked Denton to join its private bank to upgrade its WS offering.
What do you see as being the driving factors in your career?
Driving factors have been a love of dealing with families and in helping them to resolve complex planning needs. Rather than push into more senior management positions, I chose to stay in client facing roles and still enjoy every new client challenge. I qualified as a TEP in 2007. During his time in the region, he has been involved in various matters, which include reviewing the first DIFC trust law in 2005.
Who has most influenced you in your career, whether that be from within the industry itself or external?
The logical mindset developed during my degree added to the drive and structure from his time in the army, have certainly influenced my style. Two of the major people influences were Rodney Allen (then head of EMEA WS at Citi) who was willing to invest in developing my wealth structuring (WS) skills and Mike Troth (then head of WS APME at Citi) who was a great coach and mentor for several years.
The wealth management industry has seen many changes over the years; what do you see as the challenges that we see now in the MENA region?
One of the big challenges that I see for clients who need help in structuring their wealth, is that they are faced with two choices. On the one hand are the fiduciary service providers (bank or independent) who do not charge for advice but will always promote their own solutions ahead of other options.
The second choice are private client lawyers, who provide truly independent advice, but charge the client by the hour to get to that solution. With HBZ I have been able to design and implement a WS offering from scratch that is based on my 20-plus years of helping clients. HBZ PB clients can access fully independent WS advice on a complimentary basis. The advice focuses on their holistic needs, both on and offshore. Implementation if they wish to act, is via a non-commercial referral to one of a panel of trusted providers, so they get complimentary advice and an open architecture to implement it.
I have served on the STEP Arabia committee since 2012, in various capacities including as the Chairman and currently looks after the branch’s CPD as well as the content of the hugely successful annual conference.
As a privately owned and family run business, the clear and deeply felt direction is not to focus on the next quarter’s results or how many products have been sold, but on the long-term mutigenerational needs of the clients and their families. In this environment, wealth structuring is to the fore of many discussions and is an environment that any wealth structuring would relish.
If there was one thing that you could change throughout your career, what would it be and why?
If there was one thing I would change, it would be to bring forward the introduction of the DIFC & ADGM foundation regimes. In the short period since these were introduced, they have revolutionised the key area of structuring UAE assets.
For years, there was little or nothing that could be done to structure local assets and the introduction of foundations will make a huge difference to many families. Had they been introduced sooner, some of the big family disputes that have happened, could potentially have been avoided. Tim Denton
Head of Wealth Structuring, Habib Bank AG Zurich
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
WINNER Tim Denton Habib Bank AG Zurich
