Moving with the times
My career path has been the opposite of most people’s: I started out on the investment management side and quickly realised my skills lay in relationship building rather than investment itself. So I moved into pensions and sales five years ago and have never looked back.
I joined Van Lanschot Kempen in July 2019, which was good timing because the UK pensions market has really gained traction in the last couple of years. I stay in touch with about 100 defined benefit schemes, making sure they’re familiar with our proposition, but I also do a lot of work on pitches and requests for proposals (RFPs). It’s been a particularly important year for Kempen UK: we developed our messaging to reflect the client-centric nature of Van Lanschot Kempen. We won four mandates in 2020 – a huge achievement for the UK team – demonstrating the results of everyone’s hard work. We’ve been working more and more with our colleagues in the Netherlands, too – especially the research analysts, the ESG team and the data analysts, not to mention corporate communications and marketing to run events.
Part of my role is about creating brand awareness and delivering our message to the UK market, which has been hard to do without face-to-face contact. But in November, we ran a Van Gogh and wine tasting event, in which we successfully recreated the social dynamic online: through art and wine tasting, but also through chats about industry developments and virtual break-out rooms. It just goes to show how much people are moving with the times, but equally how the importance of building relationships hasn’t been lost.
Vicky Casebourne – Director of Institutional Business Development, Kempen Asset Management, UK