Wealth management
Team Recruitment and Private Wealth Advisory
The international agency Very Important Personnel offers Wealth Management solutions for high profile families, business owners, banks, private banking teams, family offices, asset management companies, and private investment structures in Dubai, the UAE, and internationally.
We operate at the intersection of two areas that cannot be separated in private wealth: people and capital.
Substantial private wealth is managed not only through banks, funds, legal structures, and investment instruments. It is managed by specific people: private bankers, CIOs, CFOs, family office executives, investment directors, portfolio managers, lawyers, tax advisers, executive assistants, family infrastructure coordinators, and trusted advisers.
The quality of these professionals determines whether a family can see the complete picture, how decisions are made, how external providers are monitored, how transparent reporting is, where conflicts of interest may arise, and whether the system can remain resilient when circumstances change.
Very Important Personnel helps clients find and assess professionals who can be entrusted with investment decisions, client relationships, confidential matters, family infrastructure, reporting, international coordination, and long-term wealth architecture.
Through Catamaran Family Office, which forms part of the same ecosystem as the agency, clients also gain access to independent wealth advisory services: investment strategy, portfolio advisory, CIO/CFO support, consolidated reporting, due diligence on investment opportunities, oversight of banks and asset managers, legal and tax coordination, family governance, succession planning, and an international network of external experts.
Our distinctive strength is that we see private wealth as more than a financial service or an executive search assignment. We see the entire system: who makes decisions, who implements them, who influences the wealth owner, who controls risks, who manages information, and where a family may depend too heavily on one person, one bank, one asset manager, or one professional perspective.
Wealth Management Recruitment
Wealth Management in an International Environment
When capital, assets, business interests, real estate, bank accounts, heirs, and family responsibilities are spread across multiple jurisdictions, a single local perspective is not enough.
Strong local expertise remains essential, particularly when it includes an understanding of the source of wealth, the UAE and wider GCC business environment, family context, cultural expectations, and established decision-making practices. For international wealth, however, it must be supported by a global infrastructure: experts in major financial centres and an understanding of local markets, banking requirements, tax regimes, legal systems, investment platforms, and regulatory constraints.
Catamaran Family Office is built around precisely this combination.
We combine an understanding of the client and their family context with international investment, legal, tax, and banking expertise. This allows us to assess decisions not through the lens of one market, currency, provider, or wealth management philosophy, but within the context of the family’s complete wealth architecture.
For clients, this means broader choice, more precise questions for providers, better comparison of alternatives, and a more disciplined decision-making process.
What Our Wealth Management Practice Includes
Our Wealth Management practice combines the expertise of the international agency Very Important Personnel and Catamaran Family Office.
Recruitment and Assessment by Very Important Personnel
Very Important Personnel recruits and assesses professionals for wealth management, asset management, private banking, family offices, and private investment structures.
These may include family office executives, CIOs, CFOs, investment directors, private bankers, relationship managers, portfolio managers, investment analysts, risk managers, lawyers, tax specialists, compliance experts, KYC/AML specialists, operations executives, executive assistants, and other trusted professionals in the private wealth sector.
Wealth Advisory by Catamaran Family Office
Catamaran Family Office can support private wealth as an independent multi-family office by analysing asset structures, developing an investment policy statement, establishing asset allocation, conducting due diligence on investment opportunities, monitoring external managers, selecting and comparing providers, coordinating banks, lawyers, and tax advisers, implementing consolidated reporting, and supporting family governance and succession architecture.
This model is particularly valuable for families whose wealth management needs extend beyond a single bank, account, asset manager, or investment product.
When assets are distributed across countries, currencies, banks, funds, real estate, companies, personal holding structures, and generations, a family needs more than another isolated recommendation. It needs an integrated system of coordination and control.
Wealth Management Recruitment
In Wealth Management, the person is often more important than the product.
A client may have access to several banks, asset management companies, investment platforms, and legal advisers. Trust, however, is built with a specific person: a private banker, CIO, family office manager, CFO, investment adviser, or coordinator who understands the family’s interests, can handle confidential information, and is able to see the complete picture.
We recruit professionals for banks, private banking divisions, asset management companies, investment structures, single-family offices, multi-family offices, affluent families, and business owners in Dubai, the UAE, and internationally.
When assessing candidates, we look beyond job titles, prominent names on a CV, and formal experience. In private wealth, professional maturity, ethics, confidentiality, motivation, reputation, investment discipline, service culture, experience working with HNWI and UHNWI clients, and the ability to prioritise long-term relationships over short-term sales are critical.
We pay particular attention to dependency risks involving key employees. In private wealth, one person may control access to information, communications, banks, documents, providers, schedules, payments, and informal arrangements. If such a role is not clearly defined, controlled, and supported by continuity planning, even a high-performing employee can become an operational risk for the family.
Asset Management Recruitment
Very Important Personnel helps asset management companies, investment funds, banks, family offices, private investment structures, holding companies, and wealth owners recruit specialists in asset management.
We recruit investment directors, portfolio managers, analysts, risk managers, and specialists in fixed income, public markets, private equity, venture capital, private credit, real estate, digital assets, investment operations, reporting, and other areas of asset management.
For these roles, education, experience, and product knowledge are only part of the profile. Investment discipline, independent thinking, the ability to manage risk, an understanding of liquidity, due diligence experience, the ability to work with an investment committee, clear reporting skills, and the capacity to explain complex decisions to the wealth owner or their trusted representatives are equally important.
We assess not only a candidate’s professional skills but also their investment philosophy, decision-making style, approach to risk, ethical standards, maturity, and compatibility with the client’s culture.
Private Banking Recruitment
Very Important Personnel helps banks, private banking divisions, wealth management teams, and financial groups recruit professionals to serve affluent private clients, including HNWI, VHNWI, and UHNWI clients.
We recruit private bankers, senior private bankers, relationship managers, heads of private banking, investment advisers, product specialists, credit specialists, client service professionals, and experts in onboarding, KYC/AML, compliance, and operational support.
Private Banking is a sector in which a hiring mistake can be costly. The wrong employee may affect client trust, the bank’s reputation, sales quality, its compliance profile, and team stability.
For this reason, we assess not only a candidate’s client book and financial performance, but also the quality of their relationships, professional ethics, understanding of the client’s family and business context, ability to comply with UAE and international KYC/AML requirements, capacity to present banking and investment solutions appropriately, and commitment to protecting long-term trust rather than pursuing short-term results.
Wealth Management Services Through Catamaran Family Office
Catamaran Family Office is an independent multi-family office operating within the same ecosystem as the international agency Very Important Personnel.
We help affluent families, business owners, entrepreneurs, heirs, single-family offices, and private investment structures build effective private wealth management systems.
Our role is not to sell financial products or replace every existing adviser. We create an independent layer that enables the family to see the complete picture, review proposals, compare alternatives, monitor providers, and make decisions within a unified wealth framework.
We can support investment strategy, portfolio architecture, due diligence on investment opportunities, the selection of banks and asset managers, fee assessment, consolidated reporting, CIO/CFO support, legal and tax coordination, preparation for banking onboarding in the UAE and other international financial centres, family governance, succession planning, and the family’s cross-border requirements.
Independent Review of Investment Decisions
A family office team, bank, broker, asset management company, investment adviser, or fund may present a client with an investment solution, strategy, product, or individual transaction.
The key question is not how compelling the proposal appears. The key question is whether it serves the family’s interests.
We analyse investment opportunities from the client’s perspective, considering wealth objectives, acceptable risk, investment horizon, liquidity requirements, currency exposure, tax and legal constraints, the existing portfolio, family plans, and the overall resilience of the wealth structure.
This second opinion is particularly important when a recommendation comes from a party with its own commercial interests, product range, or limited mandate.
A bank, broker, asset manager, fund, lawyer, or tax adviser may be highly professional and valuable. However, each acts within the boundaries of its own role, business model, and area of responsibility.
Catamaran Family Office helps the family compare these recommendations and understand how a specific decision may affect the entire wealth architecture.
Portfolio Advisory and Oversight of Asset Managers
Effective wealth management does not begin with selecting a fund, structured note, bond, or “investment idea of the month.”
The first step is to understand the family’s objectives, asset composition, management horizon, acceptable risk, liquidity needs, currency exposure, tax and legal constraints, relevant jurisdictions, liabilities, succession objectives, and decision-making rules.
This foundation supports the development of an investment framework: an investment policy statement, asset allocation, permitted asset classes, diversification principles, manager selection criteria, due diligence procedures, an investment committee format, and a reporting system.
We can conduct an independent portfolio review, assess external asset managers, evaluate investment opportunities, analyse fees, support direct investments, club deals, real estate, and alternative investments, and establish CIO support, consolidated reporting, and coordination with legal and tax advisers.
We consider not only potential returns but also the cost of achieving them: risk, liquidity, fee structure, counterparties, jurisdictions, tax implications, correlations, concentration, scenario resilience, and the role of each instrument within the family’s overall wealth architecture.
Why an International Framework Matters for Substantial Wealth
A global portfolio cannot be assessed effectively from within a single professional environment.
Different markets have different dynamics, investor structures, regulations, tax implications, liquidity cycles, and sources of risk.
The US market, European asset managers, Swiss private banking, English law, UAE structures, DIFC and ADGM frameworks, Asian financial centres, Singaporean banks, Chinese assets, international funds, and cross-border planning require specialist expertise rather than a generalised perspective.
Catamaran Family Office works with an international network of experts and external providers in key jurisdictions. This allows clients to consider more than one viewpoint and compare solutions based on practices across different financial centres.
We do not treat local and international experience as competing approaches. For many clients, the greatest value arises when a deep understanding of their personal, family, cultural, and business context in the UAE and the wider GCC is combined with international investment, legal, tax, and banking expertise.
Family Office Solutions for Banks and Private Banking Teams
Private Banking today competes on more than rates, products, and access to investment opportunities.
For affluent clients, another consideration is increasingly important: who helps them see the complete picture of their wealth, coordinate external advisers, address family, legal, tax, international, and succession matters, and manage requirements that fall outside traditional banking services.
Through Catamaran Family Office, we help banks, private banking divisions, and wealth management teams in Dubai, the UAE, and other international financial centres expand their client proposition through independent family office advisory, international expertise, and access to trusted external advisers.
Catamaran Family Office can support individual projects, provide a second opinion, coordinate complex family matters, or act as a long-term partner supporting affluent clients.
The bank retains the client relationship and strengthens the value of its private banking service. The client receives a broader support framework for matters that may not fall within the bank’s traditional mandate.
The Principal Advantage of a Multi-Family Office
The principal advantages of Catamaran Family Office are independence, international expertise, and a focus on the family’s long-term interests.
We do not view wealth through the lens of one bank, broker, fund, region, manager, or investment scenario.
We assess decisions more broadly, considering the asset structure, family objectives, different instrument classes, currencies, jurisdictions, tax and legal factors, liquidity, risks, providers, succession architecture, and a multi-generational horizon.
Rather than receiving a ready-made product from a provider’s shelf, the client can compare, verify, structure, and make an informed choice.
This is what distinguishes a multi-family office from a financial product distributor.
Why Clients Choose Very Important Personnel and Catamaran Family Office
For more than ten years, Very Important Personnel has worked with the private sector, family offices, private banking, luxury services, investment professionals, executives, executive assistants, finance professionals, lawyers, asset managers, and teams serving affluent clients.
We understand the talent market from within: how banks, brokerage firms, asset management structures, family offices, and investment teams operate; which roles a family genuinely needs; when an in-house appointment is appropriate; when external support is sufficient; which candidates can be trusted with confidential information; and which may present a risk despite an impressive CV.
Our partnership with Catamaran Family Office strengthens this expertise with a practical understanding of wealth management: investment policy, asset allocation, CIO/CFO support, due diligence, manager oversight, consolidated reporting, legal and tax coordination, compliance, UAE and international KYC/AML requirements, family governance, succession planning, and family infrastructure.
Clients choose us when they need more than a stream of CVs or a catalogue of financial products. They need a trusted partner capable of working simultaneously with people, capital, confidentiality, and the family’s long-term interests.