The Conversation That Should Be Happening Before October

Three questions the best heads of wealth ask their senior bankers — now

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Monday’s issue argued that senior bankers move in a four-month window. April through July.

Several of you wrote back. The replies fell into two camps.

Some agreed and asked what to do about it.

Others pushed back — in their experience, senior moves happen continuously, not seasonally.

Both views are right.

Senior bankers consider moving year-round. They act in the window.

Today’s issue is for the people who replied with the first question. What to actually do about it.

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Why this is operational, not theoretical

Most heads of wealth have a retention conversation cadence.

It is anchored to the performance review. Once a year, in the second half. Designed to close out the year that just happened and align on the year ahead.

By that point in the calendar, the senior banker who is going to leave has already made the decision. The conversation is a debrief.

Three additional conversations, run in the right order at the right time, materially change retention outcomes.

They take ten minutes each.

They do not appear in any standard HR framework.

And they are usually the difference between a senior banker who stays for another cycle and a senior banker who quietly opens a door elsewhere.

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Question one. What in the last twelve months did you find yourself doing that you did not expect to be doing?

This is the role-drift question.

Most senior bankers cannot tell you in the abstract whether their role has shifted. Asked directly, they can.

The answer surfaces what the work has actually become — not what the job description says.

If the answer is small (one or two things, easily named, broadly aligned with the role) the conditions are intact.

If the answer is large, vague, or comes with frustration in the voice, the role has drifted. That is the signal that needs acting on.

The cost of asking this question is ten minutes. The cost of not asking it is sometimes a senior banker.

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Question two. What did you say no to this year that you wish you had said yes to?

This is the constraint question.

Senior bankers operate inside constraints. Approval thresholds, product limits, geographic scope, client tiering rules.

Most of those constraints are necessary. Some of them are quietly costing the bank revenue and the banker their best work.

The answer to this question identifies which constraint, specifically, is the one worth revisiting.

Heads of wealth who hear this question answered seriously almost always find at least one constraint that can be loosened without significant downside.

The senior banker who feels heard on this question is a senior banker who stays.

The one who answers and then sees nothing change is the one who leaves.

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Question three. If you were going to take a call from a search firm in the next six months, what would the conversation be about?

This is the direct question. It is also the one most heads of wealth never ask.

Senior bankers will answer it honestly. Not because they are planning to take the call, but because the question itself is not adversarial. It is a question about what is missing.

The answer is usually one of four things.

A platform capability the current bank does not have.

A geographic exposure the current bank cannot offer.

A leadership conversation the current bank has not had.

Or compensation — though, in practice, this is the least common honest answer.

Whichever it is, the head of wealth now knows specifically what would move the senior banker if a search firm called.

And usually, that thing can be addressed internally before the call arrives.

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None of these questions are difficult to ask.

None of them take longer than ten minutes to answer properly.

All three of them together take thirty minutes per senior banker, twice a year.

Sixty minutes per year, per relationship.

Against the cost of a senior banker move — the lost book transfer, the search fee, the integration period, the eighteen months of underperformance while the replacement gets up to speed — the maths is not close.

The conversation that should be happening now is the one most heads of wealth wait until October to have.

By October, the decision is usually already made.

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Steve Slater

Founder & CEO, Ateca

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

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Twenty-Five Years In Search — my first book — is now live on Amazon in Kindle and paperback. Several of the patterns in this issue are explored at greater depth in chapters two, six, and seven.

If you have read it, an honest review on Amazon helps the book reach more senior bankers who would benefit. Even one sentence makes a meaningful difference in the first two weeks after launch.

If you have not yet, you can find it here: amazon.co.uk/dp/[ISBN] (paperback) or as a Kindle eBook on the same listing.

If this issue is useful, forward it to one head of wealth who is running senior retention conversations this quarter. They can subscribe at privatebankinglife.com.