BNY Mellon has moved to overhaul the structure of its UK sales team on the back of its most recent hire.
The group has brought in Investec Asset Management’s Fergus McCarthy who will co-head the wholesale distribution team with Gary Tuffield, who already works at the company and will focus on wealth managers.
Matt Oomen, head of Europe Middle East and Africa intermediary distribution at BNY Mellon Investment Management, said the departure of former head of UK wholesale Scott Goodsir had been a “catalyst” to change the way in which its team worked.
He said the company would now have key account managers who would focus on individual companies rather than working in “silos”, which involved sales staff covering types of firm, such as life companies or discretionary managers.
Mr Oomen said the account managers would also be supported by a field sales team as well as a telephone sales team.
The change is aimed at removing the instances of several of its sales staff dealing with one firm in an uncordinated manner.
He gave an example of how the sales team under the old structure would have dealt with a national network which had relationships with asset managers, life companies and platforms. He said in this instance, the old model would have seen several sales staff from BNY servicing the network from different angles without one person leading the strategy.
Mr Oomen added the field sales team would also help the company better cover the regional offices of businesses such as discretionary fund managers.
“We are aligning our resources to how firms want to be covered,” he said.
He said the move was “headcount neutral” in that nobody was being made redundant due to the changes but the sales team would not be growing immediately.
“We have 23 people in total in the UK distribution team and thatr puts us mid-quartile in terms of staff which we are quite comfortable with,” he said.
“There is definite pressure on margins in the industry and definitely challenges out there. I would not want to have double the staff at this point. The goal is not to reduce or increase staff but to cover clients better.”
Mr Oomens said Mr McCarthy had “incredibly strong skills” in account management and “understanding how to build a support structure with a client”.
