Madhav Sivaram

Q: What did you do before joining Barclays Wealth?
A: I worked as a banker for almost a decade prior to joining Barclays Wealth – I worked in different parts of the banking industry, in the capital banking side, capital market side, and have been exposed to pretty much most sides of banking before joining Barclays Wealth.

Q: Why did you join Barclays Wealth?
I think two reasons. One was the momentum that Barclays Wealth was building up in its private banking business, and the second was the opportunity to really work with so many parts of Barclays, whether it’s the bank, or whether it’s Barclays Capital or whether it’s Barclays Global Investors. And that came out to me as one of the strong points of working with the group, and I think that probably was the driving factor for me to decide joining Barclays Wealth.

Q: What have you been doing since you joined?
A: Well I think there have been three sort of blocks in the last five or six months that I’ve been at Barclays Wealth. The first was of course the induction period where we did a fair amount of training, which was mostly off the job. Then we spent about a month getting familiar with the internal organisation and familiarity with the internal processing systems – which was more like an on the job training. Thereafter, it was in May of this year I took up the role of a private banker and have already started working with clients and working with transactions that a private banker is expected to contribute to the business.

Q: What does your current role involve?
A: Well, my current role as a private banker is mostly working with individuals, companies, and trusts and funds, in understanding their investment objectives, and understanding how we can help them as an advisor to manage money. And we cover clients from various geographies all over the world, and we support them in their decisions related to investment management, in decisions related to succession planning, in decisions related to liquidity management, in providing credit where there is a need for further wealth creation. So there is no definition of what our work actually involves on a day to day basis, but suffice to say that it is a very broad palate and we keep looking for innovative solutions for our clients.

Q: What are the most interesting projects you’ve been involved with?
A: On a given day we work with a number of client projects, a lot of them are confidential, but some of the more interesting ones involve management of client wealth - succession planning that involves how wealth is really passed on to succeeding generations for a client. It’s very interesting for me in a lot of respects because it allows us to explore various areas covering tax, covering the personal relationships within a family, covering the professional business of our client, and there is so much opportunity for innovation and suggesting ideas to the client, that I find that one of the most exciting areas to be in.

Q: What other areas of the business do you work with regularly?
A: There isn’t any part of Barclays that I haven’t been involved with in the last couple of months. I worked with the bank, I worked with the investment banking business, I worked with Barclays Global Investors, I worked across the bank in Asia, in Europe, in Africa and in the Middle East. So I have seen a bit of the bank.

Q: What support and training have you received?
A: Well the support and training has been outstanding because for the first month we were here we worked very closely with external consultants, and we worked with Barclays Capital Associates who joined with us. Thereafter, there was a lot training that was on the job in terms of understanding the processes and the products within Barclays Wealth. And I have also had the opportunity to do training programmes that were of particular interest to me and based on requirements that I thought would be applicable for my job. The organisation has been kind enough to organise that for me over the last couple of months.

Q: Why should someone come and work at Barclays Wealth?

A: I think if I was to ask someone to join Barclays Wealth, I would ask them to think about joining an organisation that has the momentum, and that has the potential to deliver upon its promises. I see all of that coming through in Barclays Wealth, and if anybody wants to share in that I think Barclays Wealth promises to support that.