Catherine

VP, Compliance, Hong Kong
Year of Hire: 2003, 2010

I work in the Hong Kong Compliance Department where I cover Sales and Trading teams. What I love about working in compliance is the opportunity to work with a variety of departments within the firm. Given the critical importance of compliance to the Firm’s continued operations, I work frequently with front office, legal, finance, and operations on a daily basis.

One area that I am involved with is the authorisation process of structured products. This allows me to act as the conduit to regulators such as the Securities and Futures Commission as well as the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. This is an exciting time to be working in compliance and I enjoy the challenges that working within an emerging financial system brings.

I graduated in 2003 from the University of Warwick in the UK with a BA degree in Law and Business and joined the graduate programme in Compliance in London. The training programme was extremely rewarding as it covered all the topics relevant to investment banking and also gave us an opportunity to meet with all the graduates from our different global offices, from New York to London to South Africa and Japan.
Within a year, Barclays Capital allowed me the opportunity to transfer from the London office to the Hong Kong office. With Asia becoming a region of focus for the firm, I wanted to be part of the flourishing Hong Kong office, which I have seen grow from a compliance team of four in 2004 to the present team of twenty.
In the following year, I wanted to challenge myself and, given the business growth in Asia, I sought opportunities in the Front Office. Barclays Capital was expanding significantly and I had an opportunity to join the Investors Solutions team selling structured products to private banks. At the time, sales was the perfect job for me – it was fast paced, challenging and on the forefront of growth. In 2006, after three years with the firm, I was given a unique opportunity from a competitor firm which I decided to accept.

After four years away from Barclays Capital, where I worked within Equity Derivative Sales, I began to stabilise my long -term career plans. Given the financial changes in the market in the past few years, the area of compliance was gaining even more credence in the industry. My previous experience in compliance, along with my knowledge of structured products, seemed to pave the way for a solid career in compliance.

Personally, a key component to job satisfaction is having great people to work with, and Barclays Capital actively seeks to foster relationships among colleagues. Furthermore, my own experience demonstrated that Barclays Capital cultivates talent and is genuinely interested in their employee’s career development. So, the decision to return to continue my career in compliance was an easy one.

I love the outdoors, which is a side of Hong Kong that many people don’t identify with when they think of the city. Within minutes, you can head outside the city, go hiking in the mountains or do a variety of water sports, and I take advantage of this at the weekends. Every year, I compete in the Stanley Dragon Boat Festival along with 300 other amateur dragon boat teams, and this past summer I also picked up rowing.

Wherever I live, I try my best to get involved in the community. I am currently an active member of the Asian University for Women and the Foodlink Foundation. I am also involved in the setting up of a new charity organization aimed at providing education and career development programmes to under-resourced communities in Hong Kong.