Interview: UBS’ regional head for Yorkshire on business ‘buzzing’ in Leeds

UBS Wealth Management has the largest UK regional footprint of any global wealth manager. Of UBS’s seven sites in the UK, the firm’s Leeds base is its fastest-growing regional office in the entire country.

As UBS’s Yorkshire office continues to grow, Karan Sejpal, who has been the North West regional head for over two years, was also appointed as the regional head for Yorkshire in December 2016.

To find out about UBS’s growth in Leeds, I recently visited the firm’s city centre office on the 8th floor of Minerva building, to talk with Karan.

Firstly I asked him why UBS chose Leeds its Yorkshire base?

Karan explained: “Wealth management is a people’s business. You need the right talent and wealth managers need to be able to look after clients. Leeds is obviously an attractive city to work in as you’ve got the best of everything, along with many other established professional firms.

“As a result, we’ve got a lot of local talent we are able to recruit in Leeds which is why the city has been a natural choice for us.”

Karan then went on to explain why the Leeds office has quickly become UBS’s fastest-growing regional office in the UK.

“It’s a combination of internal and external factors,” he said. “In terms of internal, we’ve had a very strong team who initially set up the office, and they immediately hit the ground running, meeting people and growing their client base.

“As the old saying goes ‘it takes twenty years of hard work to be a success’.”

“So it is important to consider the amount of time we’ve spent putting in the hard work at the beginning.

“We’ve also got the external factors as well. Over the course of the last few years, a lot of wealth managers and private banks have retreated from the regional markets. UBS, on the other hand, has viewed the regions as a strong growth story, which is why we have continued to invest in our regional business and our Leeds branch has been one of the biggest benefactors of this. Hence, why it is one of the best performing offices in UBS’s network.”

As for the office’s beginnings, Karan said: “The Leeds office started off as an offshoot of the Manchester office, where just a couple of people spent some time in the region. As time passed, we went on to open a small office in Leeds, and over the course of the last year and a half we’ve put in all the infrastructure to make it a fully-fledged office.”

Recently, UBS announced the appointment of Stephen Wilson as director of the Leeds office. Therefore I also asked Karan if this was part of bigger growth plans of the firm’s Yorkshire operation?

He explained: “At the moment we are using the Leeds office as the base for our Yorkshire operation, but we are always on the lookout for new talent. We very much have the view that we should be growing this further and we are still just skimming the surface in terms of who are contacting and the opportunity that’s out there.

“My ambition is that UBS should be the firm of choice. People shouldn’t be considering a London-based firm as we have the talent in the region and we definitely have the platform with UBS to deliver a global service at a local level, so that is very much the plan.”

As Karan is a specialist in managing the wealth of others, I asked for his thoughts on the impact Article 50 may have on Yorkshire’s economy.

He said: “It is very difficult to say at the moment. I wish I could give you an answer one way or the other but the thing is, a negative or positive impact can only be felt once we know exactly what the negotiating position is going to be, and exactly what we are going to negotiate around.

“I’m sure there will be winners and losers, but it is probably a bit too early to be able to judge any specific impact at this point, because we just don’t know what the negotiating stance will be.”

Karan then went on to explain what he thought which sectors/markets investors should be paying attention to in Yorkshire.

“At the moment, anything that benefits from a positive currency impact,” he said. “As sterling has been depreciating in value since the Brexit vote, exporting would be the natural choice, specifically to non-EU markets. This alleviates uncertainties the Brexit negotiations will bring.

“In general, it is industries and sectors that benefit from the weaker pound for the time being.”

As Yorkshire contributes a huge amount to the Northern economy, Karan also shared his thoughts on what needs to happen to see the government’s Northern Powerhouse initiative be realized.

Karan told me: “Devolution is key: having the powers to make decisions on welfare, infrastructure, on how you spend your business rates and so on.

“Transport links are also crucial. I think productivity is a big problem in the UK, especially in the North. It’s crazy when it takes double the amount of time to go from Hull to Liverpool than it does to go from London to Paris. This can’t be right.

“I travel from South of Manchester up to Leeds on the train, which takes around one hour 20 minutes, and a car journey could take me anything from one hour 15 minutes to two and a half hours for what is a 45/50 mile journey, which is also wrong. Transportation has to be improved. Investing in developing skills of the local workforce is also important.

“I think industries around innovation, science and technology should be our way of delivering a good Northern Powerhouse solution.

I finished off by asking Karan why he believes Yorkshire and Leeds are good places to do business?

“Working in Leeds has been great for me. As a newcomer, I am incredibly excited about Leeds, the city is buzzing. I think it is a great city to be a part of, both professionally and socially.

“We’ve also had a number of employees move over from London and other parts of the UK, who choose to work in Leeds.

“They found that Leeds had the right kind of infrastructure to have a strong work and personal life.”

He concluded: “As Yorkshire is a massive county, there are great opportunities for the region to go from strength to strength over the next five or ten years. A rising tide raises all the ships and from that perspective if Yorkshire grows, its cities will also grow.”

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