CEO of U.S. Private Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co
On the wall in Kelly Coffey's office at JPMorgan Chase is a quote from Jeff Bezos: "We're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards."
In modified form — "we should obsess over our clients" — the quote crops up in most of her quarterly town halls and leadership meetings. It embodies an ethos that Coffey tries to instill in her workforce. Managing someone's personal wealth, she reminds advisers, is a great privilege. And when it comes to people like those on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans — more than half of whom are U.S. Private Bank clients — the financial plans advisers put in place will likely have an impact far beyond the current generation.
Noticing that clients were placing more emphasis on planning for specific goals than on simple returns and performance benchmarks, Coffey oversaw the development of a new wealth management platform, launched earlier this year, to help them project future wealth, monitor and adjust their portfolios, and deploy surplus assets.
No two clients are alike, and Coffey, who sees her managerial role as that of a "player-coach," spends a lot of time figuring out how to provide tailored solutions to corporate executives, businesses owners and families with inherited wealth. "Kelly has led the charge in making sure our client conversations are advice-driven, not product-focused," said Phil Di Iorio, Coffey's boss and the CEO of the global wealth management division. Growing a wealth management business today also means reaching newly affluent clients in markets where wealth is accumulating rapidly, such as South Florida, and there, too, Coffey has "done a terrific job," Di Iorio said.
