Sean Kelleher, chief executive of Mondial Dubai, is a character best described as a veteran of the international finance industry. Arriving in Dubai in 1989, he became the manager of what was then Hansard International’s tied sales force – offering a limited range of solutions to enterprising British expatriates who had taken the plunge and headed East.
Kelleher arrived in Dubai when it was scarcely populated and, to all intents and purposes, little more than a desert occupied by a few scattered high rise buildings.
Wider choice
However, there was a burgeoning population of British expatriates earning good money in industries such as construction, oil and later finance. Kelleher identified early on that, while the Hansard International products were good, as a tied adviser he could not offer the choice he felt clients required.
“It was all very Middle Ages compared with the financial services we are able to offer today,” he reflects.
Having been a bank manager in the UK, Kelleher says he enjoyed the holistic side of financial planning – looking at what the client has, what they want to do and how he can help them achieve their goals – and sought to offer this, in addition to the Hansard International products.
Kelleher is also happy to admit that he was enjoying life in Dubai, with the First Gulf War in 1990 bringing unexpected opportunities including, oddly, the sale of a prawn trawler, which Kelleher describes as his “first big deal”.
Multicultural staff
After nearly seven years, Kelleher was in a position to buy the Hansard International sales force, along with other management, from its then owner Leonard Polonsky, who Kelleher describes as a “real personality”, marking the beginning of a long and eventful journey.
In 1996 Mondial became the first IFA business to receive a Central Bank licence in the United Arab Emirates, and Kelleher set about the task of building a multicultural team in order to tap into the different markets which were beginning to present themselves.
It is impossible to look at the business model of Mondial without first understanding the make-up of the population of the UAE and more specifically Dubai, where the company is headquartered.
Targeting the market
According to recent statistics, the largest section of the population is from an Asian, largely Pakistani and Indian, background; the second largest demographic is the local Emirati population which accounts for around a third of the population; with Western immigrants making up the remaining percentage of the known population.
As Kelleher points out “why bother with the tiny bit?”
It was therefore his plan to build a team which was representative of the population, and one able to access those significantly larger portions of the market. Kelleher says during that time he is proud to have not lost a single adviser to a competitor.
“We very rarely mixed with competitors as our business was coming from very different communities. And the British employees – most of them are still with me – did not need to look about. In fact at that time it felt like there was no competition,” he recalls.
However, Kelleher’s team-building plans were sidelined a little in 2002 when he became chairman of Financial Partners – a collective of IFA businesses which included Mondial in Dubai, but also incorporated IFA firms based in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Team-building skills
Kelleher’s ability to put together and keep together a team was, he says, one of the main reasons he became the chairman of Financial Partners.
“Due to my experience of putting a strong multicultural team together, it was felt that I was more able to talk to the other managers and get them to grow teams,” he explains.
“Although you must remember that each of those seven managers had all built their own teams so are all able, one way or another, to run teams; but it was important someone could manage them, and you cannot manage managers if you are also running a team of advisers.”
During this period, Kelleher says he was pleased with the progress of Financial Partners, which he estimates grew its assets under administration by 20% year-on-year. Unfortunately there was trouble brewing, and during the financial crisis of 2008-09, the business became embroiled in problems over a private equity deal which Kelleher concedes was “massive”.
Private equity company Arch Financial Products took a 48% stake in the company and, as that company began to be unwound, Financial Partners and the administrators of Arch decided the best course of action would be to split the company back into separate regional business, with Arch administrators retaining shareholding interests.
Climbing a hill
This devolution led to Financial Partners becoming a network, rather than a centralised business, in 2009. At this point, Kelleher resumed leadership of Mondial, while remaining chairman of Financial Partners – the network – and began to rebuild the team, again with a multicultural focus.
“I felt a little like the Grand Old Duke of York – having taken Mondial to the top of the hill, I found myself at the bottom of a different hill when I took it up again in 2009,” he says.
“However, this time I had at least ten people who had been through that journey once and who were ready to go up another hill. The difference between 1989 and 2009 was colossal – having ten guys who have already been through it, seen it and done it for a period of time made a massive difference.”
This time around Kelleher says the focus of the business, while still aiming to target a cross-section of the racially-mixed population, has shifted to also include the capture of lump sum business and ensuring that the company builds assets under administration – which Kelleher refers to as “going deep”.
“With Financial Partners we went wide, with lots of branches – it was good fun and we learned a lot – but when you have got 20 odd people in lots of different countries, it is very tiring, and the challenges in each market are quite different,” says Kelleher.
“My current focus strategically is to go deep – to build multiculturalism into this team and to gain referrals and large book business from it.”
Higher standards
This “large book” business includes corporate clients, with local airlines and a stockbroking firm among their number. Advising on the pension schemes for these companies is not only profitable in itself but, says Kelleher, leads on to generate further business as the employees also look to Mondial for advice.
A wider force within the international sphere of financial planning also seems to be influencing the direction of Kelleher’s thinking. Regulators are increasingly focused on the independence, accountability and ultimately quality of advice being offered by advisers, and most firms now at least recognise that clients and regulators will expect higher standards, even if they are not implementing a strategy to deal with it.
In this vein, Mondial has set up the Mondial Academy, through which it is training staff to professional standards.
Specifically, Mondial has asked the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI), a London-based global provider of a range of financial qualifications, to accredit its programme.
Taking a chance
Using CISI is, according to Kelleher, a “bit of a gamble” on the likelihood the company will emerge as the preferred advisory certification of the Emirati Securities & Commodities Authority, which is currently shaping up to be the dominant regulatory force in the UAE.
Training advisers to professional standards to ensure a high quality of advice will in turn boost the company’s referral rate and ultimately drive up Mondial’s AUA, says Kelleher.
Interestingly another driving force, says Kelleher, is investors’ awareness of risk and the greater knowledge clients have of what it takes to build assets.
“Investors these days grasp that the only way to get returns is to introduce risk into your portfolio.
“This is partly because we are in an environment where bank account returns are lower than inflation, meaning purchasing power is being eroded over time, and once this is understood there is more of a tendency towards taking risk.”
It is perhaps fitting that Kelleher notes this increased awareness of risk in his clients, as a manager who has never been afraid to take a risk himself in order to keep his firm ahead of the game.
