After winning the 2021 Spear’s Wealth Management Award for HNW Wealth Manager of the Year, Mary Haly of Waverton discusses her biggest successes of the past year
It’s been a whirlwind three years for Mary Haly since she joined Waverton. Having grown her team’s assets under management from £60 million to just short of £200 million, her results speak for themselves. But she notes that much of her success has been achieved by building and cultivating existing client relationships. ‘I’ve been quite successful in doing that,’ she notes with an understated confidence. ‘We’re very focused on clients. They are treated individually and they really love that – they get a lot of attention.’
Collectively, the teams at Waverton know ‘100 stocks really well and 30 to 40 incredibly well’, says Haly. ‘I think clients feel that the companies they are investing in are really well researched, and are tomorrow’s companies for investment.’
With markets at all-time highs, some wonder whether a correction is coming. But Haly remains sanguine: ‘With opening up, and with the fact that quite a lot of people have been savers, we do think the propensity to spend will continue and we will see profitability improve.’
Haly has also spearheaded the firm’s enhanced responsible investment service, which serves ‘clients who want to focus on emphasising helping the environment, health and wellbeing, and positive social practices’. She connects this to family fishing expeditions in South Africa, where she grew up. Noting the calming properties of time spent out on the water, she adds: ‘I would say you feel very close to God, or very close to nature. You can spend quite a lot of time when nothing happens, and then it all goes completely frenetic.’
Her firm certainly seems to be sailing in the right direction – partly thanks to its philosophy of being ‘investment-led, client-driven’. Haly concludes: ‘We feel that Waverton is starting to gain momentum.’
Image: Sebastian Nevols