Five Questions Most Banks Aren't Asking

And what each one would tell you if you did

Five questions to add to your next senior interview. Each one surfaces something the standard process misses. Five minutes to read — worth keeping.

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Most senior PB interviews ask the same things.

Walk me through your book. What is your AUM. Who are your top relationships. What is your year-over-year growth. What do you need from a platform.

All of which are reasonable questions.

None of which tell you what you actually need to know.

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1. Tell me about a client you lost.

The standard interview asks how the banker has grown their book. This question asks where they have lost ground.

What you are listening for: whether they remember the loss in operational terms (the client moved because of X) or in relational terms (the client moved because I missed Y).

Operational answers tell you the banker manages transactions.

Relational answers tell you the banker manages relationships.

Only one of those compounds across a market cycle.

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2. Which of your clients have followed you through more than one move?

This is the single most important question in a senior banker interview.

A book that has moved with the banker across two or three employers is a portable book. A book that has stayed behind at each previous bank is a platform book.

The CV looks identical. The economics of the hire are completely different.

If the answer is fewer than five names, the book is platform-dependent. If the answer is fifteen or more, the book is genuinely portable and the hire economics work.

Most banks never ask this question. The number it would surface is the number that determines whether the next senior hire pays back its cost.

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3. What is the hardest conversation you've had with a client in the last twelve months?

Senior bankers are good at telling you about deals they have won. They are less practised at telling you about conversations they have managed.

The hardest client conversations — declining a referral, surfacing a structural problem, telling a UHNW principal something they did not want to hear — are the conversations that determine whether the relationship survives a difficult market.

A banker who cannot name a hard conversation from the last year has either had none, or is not the kind of banker who notices them.

Both are revealing.

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4. Who would you bring with you, and why?

Senior bankers rarely move alone. The hires that compound fastest move with at least one trusted relationship — an investment specialist, a junior RM, a credit colleague.

The names matter. The reasoning matters more.

A banker who says “I would bring X because the client coverage works better with two of us” is thinking commercially. A banker who says “I would bring X because they are owed a step up” is thinking patronage.

One of those becomes a platform. The other becomes a politics problem in eighteen months.

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5. What would you do in the first ninety days that you couldn't do in your current role?

The standard interview asks why the banker wants to leave. This question asks what they would do if they arrived.

The answer reveals two things.

First, whether the banker has actually thought about the new platform — or whether they are running from the old one.

Second, whether their plan is realistic. If the first ninety days they describe require approvals, infrastructure, or relationships that your bank does not have, the hire will stall in week six.

Most senior PB hires that fail at year two failed in the first ninety days because nobody asked them this question at interview.

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None of these questions are technically difficult.

They take ninety seconds each to ask.

They surface information that the standard interview, run a thousand times across the industry, consistently misses.

The next senior interview you sit in, try one of them.

Pay attention to how long the candidate takes before answering.

The pause is where the real information lives.

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Steve Slater

Founder & CEO, Ateca

Dubai · Qatar · Hong Kong · Singapore · Riyadh · Limassol · London

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Steve writes Private Banking Life for senior wealth professionals across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.

His first book — Twenty-Five Years In Search — publishes on Amazon on Tuesday 19 May. Reply to this email to receive a notice on launch day.

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