The Interview: Glen Tonks

A variety of regional leadership roles around the world has made Glen Tonks something of a specialist Country Manager. Having recently taken the top job at Credit Suisse in Guernsey, he explains why the role was so appealing, why the Channel Islands’ relationship with London is more important than ever, and his plans to transform the organisation

Tell us about your background and how you moved into financial services.

I grew up in a small town just north of Wellington, New Zealand, and eventually moved north to the city of Auckland. 

I joined a local New Zealand bank straight out of school – without actually even moving into sixth-form. That was sparked by my stepfather. He was a manager for a local bank, I’d always been quite good at maths – numbers fascinated me – so I decided to join a bank. 

From there, I had five years with Westpac in New Zealand. I then joined HSBC and spent 19 years in roles around the world – from Jersey to Hong Kong and then leading the New Zealand business, as well as being a head of risk in the private bank in Asia.

One of the things I’ve done with my career is to build it quite broad. I’ve worked across retail banking, wealth management, private banking, commercial banking – first and second line of defence – working in risk but also in the business.

How did that experience lead you to your current role with Credit Suisse in the Channel Islands?

At the end of 2019, with HSBC and based in Jersey, we decided as a family to take a career break. I’d spent the better part of 25 years in financial services, we’d moved around a lot and never really taken time out. So 2020 was going to be a year-long career break travelling the world. 

Of course, after a couple of months, the pandemic hit and changed our plans considerably. We were in Australia in March and, with the situation worsening by the day, we decided to go back to New Zealand, where we ended up being locked down.

As a result of that, and with us not going anywhere fast, I decided to put some plans in place on where I wanted to go next with my career.

To do that, I put together a list of where we would like to live in the world – and the Channel Islands was up on the list because we’d had a fantastic time in Jersey.
 
I also wanted my next role to be with a firm with strong values and a strong culture – and Credit Suisse was on that list. 

And then I looked at the type of role I wanted – a leadership role where I could really help steer the direction of the organisation. It just so happened that the Chief Operating Officer role came up at Credit Suisse, Guernsey, which ticked all the boxes.

So I joined Credit Suisse in October last year. It’s been a fantastic eight months and, having spent the best part of six months as the COO, I was privileged to take on my current role as CEO for Credit Suisse in Guernsey a few months ago.

Is that expertise across different areas of banking more important now, given the complexity and interconnectedness of financial services today?

There are two parts to that question. When I was setting out on a career myself, I was keen on variety and diversity. I always had a career goal of being a country CEO and I thought the best way to achieve that was by having broad experience and knowledge, and a diverse range of skills. So it’s important from the perspective of achieving the role you want. 

The second part is around the challenges and the opportunities we face today, particularly with emerging and disruptive technology reshaping our industry and changing our clients’ expectations. 

You need people in certain roles with quite broad experience, but you also need real specialists. From a risk perspective, cyber risk is one of the key challenges we face, particularly as we do more online and as we introduce more automation and technology. For that, you need specialists. So I think the answer is that you need both.

You mentioned your long-held ambition to be a country manager. What drove that ambition and what is it about your skillset that has helped you be such a specialist?

What drove me was the desire to have a role where I could command my own destiny, where I could reshape a strategy to enable the business to thrive – and I’ve always felt the country CEO is the perfect role to do that. 

I’ve always been interested in strategy. I’ve always tried to step back and look at that bigger picture – to ask what clients want from us, to examine what our competitors are doing, to understand the things reshaping our industry. The country CEO role is perfect for realising that.

The other reason I like the role is that I like being close to the clients. I want to be where the rubber hits the road, mixing with the clients. I spent the first 10 years of my career very much in relationship management, sales and distribution – and that fuelled my interest in dealing directly with the clients.

While on your career break, you also studied for a master’s degree at the Tech Futures Lab, with the focus on leveraging technology. Was that a deliberate choice or was the timing somewhat fortunate in terms of technology becoming such an enabler during the pandemic?

It was a bit of both. When we took the career break, there were two things we wanted to do as a family. One was to travel the world with our two young girls – to have some really amazing experiences. That was really important for us as a family. 

The second thing I wanted to do was some further education, because I’d joined the world of work straight out of school and, while you do a lot of training and development with the types of businesses I’ve worked with, I’d long had an itch to do something in a university setting. 

As I mentioned, strategy has always interested me, but so does technology, and that was the driver behind the master’s – to further fuel that knowledge but equally to make myself match fit for the future. 

Technology, particularly emerging and disruptive tech, is probably the biggest driver of change in our industry, so it seems a sensible choice.

You’ve been in the hotseat at Credit Suisse in Guernsey for a couple of months now. Can you share an overview of the business in the Channel Islands?

Our operation in Guernsey is a material branch for Credit Suisse AG, the parent. One of the important things I say to clients booking in Guernsey is that you are getting access to the parent balance sheet. So we’re not a subsidiary, we are a material branch. That’s the first important thing. 

We are one of the leading booking centres for the Credit Suisse Group and particularly for the UK, and my reporting line is into the CEO for the UK. That’s important because a big target market for the private bank that we have in the UK is the resident non-domiciled client. 

Those clients need to have assets offshore and that’s why Guernsey is an important booking centre for our UK business. It’s also an important booking centre for our Switzerland-based clients. 

And that’s crucial for a couple of reasons. One is that we are a branch and we’ve got the balance sheet strength. The second is that we have the expertise and capabilities to do that as a booking centre. That is our bread and butter. We do that day in, day out.

And we have a strong discretionary investment management team with those capabilities in mind. 
 
Another key thing for Guernsey is the treasury capability that we have within the group – we have a large treasury function here that enables funding throughout the group.

A large percentage of the private bank’s deposits are booked through Guernsey, because we’ve got that infrastructure and risk management capability here.

Finally, the majority of Credit Suisse Group’s proprietary investments are also booked through Guernsey. We’re not just a wealth management branch. There’s some really interesting stuff we do here because we’ve got the infrastructure and the teams with the skills and capabilities required, be that treasury or proprietary investment.

How has the operation in Guernsey performed in recent years – and what is the plan for the next period? 

The strategic journey for the branch over the past four or five years, under my predecessor, has been one of reshaping – a reorganising phase. It’s a little bit like building a house – you set a really strong foundation and now we’re in the growth phase.

So one of the key things I’ve done in the past eight months here in Guernsey is to implement a new three-year strategic plan, which has broad support from key stakeholders within the group to enter a growth phase. And I think that’s the key message: we are now in a growth phase for Credit Suisse in Guernsey.  

What does that strategy entail?

The strategy is split into three parts. The first part is growth – accelerating client growth and investing in our people, or what I call developing the skills of the future. As technology is rapidly changing our industry, the pace of change today will be the slowest in our people’s careers. 

So we need to think about it that way – developing our people and our skills for the future, to enable that growth and an innovative mindset to really support change. This is also about developing and motivating our people so we are an employer of choice here in Guernsey.

Priority number two is around improving our operational efficiency, particularly as a booking centre. That’s about introducing more automation, so we can be more scalable, more productive in what we do, and reduce risk in our operation. That’s also about empowering people to do more. 

That comes with a growth and innovative mindset and it will greatly help us accelerate the pace of change. When you’re in a reorganising phase – which we have been for the past four or five years – you tend to rely on more centralised decision-making. That’s right for the time, but it doesn’t work when you’re in growth. 

As to efficiency, that’s all about trying to drive more continuous improvement – to make us more efficient, more effective and more flexible to meet our client needs.

The third part of the strategy, and arguably the most exciting, is around transformation. This is a transformational programme aimed at really harmonising the wealth management platform globally. 

At the moment, all our markets have a different technology stack, a different platform, different products and services. This transformation is about harmonising all of those, which will really enable the group to accelerate growth and enable us to scale up. 

It will also allow us to manage our risk better because we will no longer be using different platforms, different systems and different risk reporting. 

The strategy is a multi-year programme and, in 25 years in financial services, it is the biggest thing I’ve seen in terms of transformation and investment. It’s about delivering the bank of the future and it’s changing everything that we do – front to back – through new tools, a new operating model, new products and new services. 

It’s a significant investment in technology and the business here in Guernsey.

What will be the outcome for clients?

I think the main thing will be better client experiences. The aim is that it will give us simpler processes – a bank that will be easier to deal with. It will mean more digital capability for our clients, too. 

But what it will mean actually – and this is probably the most important thing – is more time for our relationship managers to spend with clients. 

That’s the efficiency and productivity piece. The whole plan is very much centred around the client, and I come back to this point about everything we do being focused on the client – through technology, operational excellence, our people and driving more entrepreneurial thinking.

What’s driving that renewed emphasis on the client experience?

We understand that there is a change taking place in terms of what clients want and how they want to engage. 

When you look at all these influencing factors we have right now – a changing demographic, the rise of awareness of ESG, a desire for purpose as well as profit – the client experience needs to respond. 

A big advantage the traditional banks have – banks like Credit Suisse – is that we have a huge amount of data about our clients, which has been built up over decades. Transformation is about unlocking that data to be able to use it in a way that can give better experiences to our clients. 

And, notwithstanding the challenges from fintechs and digital neobanks, the area in which we have a competitive advantage is in our data.

This isn’t your first role in the Channel Islands. What is the continued appeal of the islands in your view?

From a Guernsey perspective, where I sit right now, I think there are a number of things to recognise. 

First and foremost, it’s an international finance centre of more than 50 years’ standing – and that means something.

It’s self-governing, it’s self-funding – and it has some 800-odd years of independence. It has a strong credit rating from S&P. It has one of the highest regulatory standards globally. It’s endorsed by the OECD. And it has a worldwide reputation for financial services innovation. 

So all of those things together, plus the tax efficiency, make Guernsey a very strong, very capable jurisdiction for an individual, family or trust to put their assets in. As is always the case, there are a couple of issues that are currently a watching brief – such as the global tax discussions.

But I come back to the Channel Islands overall being a very appealing jurisdiction in terms of the skills and capabilities that are here. 

If I look at private equity or venture capital funds, for example, we have very strong capabilities here for those sectors, and those funds. 

And those important points around governance, the history of the islands as a financial centre, together with very strong regulatory standards – some of the highest in the world – mean that this will continue to be a very appealing international finance centre.

Looking forward to the future, I also think the changes around Brexit may even create further opportunities for Guernsey to look further afield to, say, eastern Asia in terms of opportunities for clients. 

Those regions will potentially look at Guernsey as a jurisdiction and I think that’s the medium to long-term opportunity for Guernsey in particular.

You talked about the Channel Islands being on the list when you wrote down the key ingredients for your move. What, from a personal point of view, made the islands so appealing?

Well, first and foremost the Channel Islands are clean and safe, and have wonderful beaches. I’m just thinking from a family perspective there.

I also think education is of a very good standard in the Channel Islands. And I’m sitting here looking out over the castle, to Sark and Herm, and it’s an amazing environment. It’s a really special place. 

Then you’ve got the proximity to the UK and the proximity to Europe. So you have the best of both worlds – an international finance centre, but a small community, a family environment and just an amazing place to live in terms of work-life balance. 

What other issues are high on the agenda for Credit Suisse Guernsey right now?

Well, one of the things that actually underpins the strategy we have been talking about in some detail is the increasing focus on sustainability. 

Credit Suisse in Guernsey was one of the founding members of the Guernsey Green Forum – bringing together employers from different sectors and different industries to think about sustainability and share best practice is clearly important to us.

So that’s on our agenda – how we can be more focused on the environment and more sustainable for Guernsey going forward. 

The second thing is that within Credit Suisse there’s a real demand from clients, but also staff, to be more ESG-focused. When I created our sustainability committee earlier this year, 80% of our staff put their hands up to join the committee, which was remarkable. 

So we don’t have an awareness problem. It’s now about how we harness that passion and get that contribution to really drive a more sustainable business here. 

And, going back to the subject of community engagement, we sponsored the recent Guernsey schools’ sustainability conference. To go along and hear secondary school children talking about the environment and what motivates them was an incredible experience. 

As an overall theme, sustainability is an important area of focus for us. It underpins our strategy and over time will become an even more important part of it.