S & i review back story michael williamson

4/29/2016 S & I Review | Back story: Michael Williamson

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S&I Review -Back story:Michael WilliamsonCISI member Michael Williamson speaks to the S&IR about hisunconventional career, which has spanned from Florida to London

As convention would have it, people in financial services tend to start out their career having

completed a bachelor’s degree, before moving up the jobs ladder with qualifications in tow. But

CISI member Michael Williamson has taken a different route. The 37-year-old MBA student at

London’s Cass Business School is fresh from winning the Bloomberg Investment Ideas Challenge

2016, but his career trajectory is in some ways back to front.

“I didn’t initially go to college from high school. I started out originating mortgages at the age of

18 and then moved into the securities industry,” says Williamson. “By the time I was 19, I was

working for a broker dealer. Everyone else had graduated from college, whereas all I had was a

year’s mortgage broking experience.”

In July 2000, Williamson joined a mortgage broker in Tampa as a loan originator and worked his

way up to become a branch manager. Then, after a short period in institutional sales and

wholesale lending at a small community bank based in Texas, he moved back to Tampa, this time

to a branch of E*Trade Financial, working as a national relationship manager. “I managed about

400 high-asset clients, and $600m+ of high-asset client funds.”

Staying in South Florida, his next career move was to TD Ameritrade. There he was an investment

consultant/relationship manager and a high-ranking broker, responsible for handling $650m in

assets, with about 250 high-asset clients.

Evaluating the opportunitiesDespite the tough times facing the banking and financial services industry in the post-Lehman

Brothers collapse period, Williamson felt confident enough in the landscape to ensure his clients

felt the same. He gave clients advice regarding their portfolios, assessing the clients’ risk

tolerance and identifying their concerns. “My role was all about communication, building

relationships and trust. It was about educating the client and helping them evaluate their main

objectives – for example, their liquidity requirements and succession plans. At the time, a lot of

clients were afraid of investing and didn’t know who to go to with their questions. They were

looking for guidance. People just want to be sure that they are taking appropriate risks, and you



can help them achieve that by being prudent and knowing your client.”

After TD Ameritrade, Williamson decided it was time to take a well-earned breather, and, followingsome charity work in El Salvador, he was presented with an opportunity to work for boutiqueinvestment firm Oppenheimer & Co in July 2011. There, Williamson had a fiduciary role, offeringhigh-asset clients customised portfolios via wrap accounts, and access to hedge funds and assetmanagers, as well as life and health insurance and variable annuities.

“It was an opportunity to build up my client base, and I learned so much from my veryexperienced colleagues, but I was drastically younger than most people there – by at least 20years.”

Crossing the pondThis, together with his wife’s ambition to work in the luxury industry, was a prompt for a movebeyond US borders. They moved to Monaco, where his wife studied for her master’s degree.

Meanwhile, Williamson concluded that an MBA for himself would make sense, and he joined theCISI in hopes to learn more about the UK financial system.

“I flew from Monaco to London and met some people from Cass Business School. The school isamazing, and was recently ranked 37th in the world for business. Meanwhile, my wife had a joboffer in London,” says Williamson. He was accepted onto the course in July 2015.

Williamson was elected President of the Banking Society at Cass and hit the ground running,networking furiously and helping build up its membership – it now has 1,000 members.

Getting involved“I met George Littlejohn [a senior advisor to the CISI] and we spoke about collaborating betweenthe CISI and the Cass Banking Society. He and Danny Corrigan(http://www.cisi.org/cisiweb2/cisi-news/s-i-review-article/back-story-danny-corrigan) [chair ofThe City UK Russia, CIS and Mongolia Group] have been fantastic, inviting me to their ‘GreatBritish Break Off’ debate events. I’ve also helped partner with Cass and the CISI to put on moresuch events, with our next event geared towards C-suite executives. Hopefully, we have built along-lasting relationship between Cass and the CISI that will continue to grow long after Igraduate,” says Williamson.

The CISI has been integral to Williamson’s career ambitions since he arrived in London. “Itprovides the licences to get the job I want. I will be taking the Private Client Investment Advice &Management (level 6) exams (http://www.cisi.org/cisiweb2/cisi-website/study-with-us/wealth-retail/private-client-investment-advice-management) in June 2016 and I hope to use thequalification as an asset throughout my career,” he says.

This February, his unconventional career path paid dividends when he won the BloombergInvestment Ideas Challenge – a competition that involves students picking stocks and sendingtheir investment ideas into the Bloomberg Professional Service trade ideas network.

Although he had never traded in Europe, he used his technical analysis and long experience toget ahead. “My hunch was that the UK pound was going to head lower. So I researched to find anexchange-traded fund [ETF] that was thinly traded and that was triple-leveraged, and dealt withthe pound versus the US dollar. I wanted an ETF that was thinly traded because that is when thebig spreads generally happen, and again it was something I’m familiar with. I gained 10.17% byplacing one trade. The person in second place gained less than 6%.”



The next moveAs the winner, Williamson had the chance to spend a week at Bloomberg. This time, in contrast tohis experience at Oppenheimer, Williamson was one of the more experienced ones. The overallexperience, he says, was fantastic.

“My goal was to get a better understanding not only of how Bloomberg works and operates, butalso to learn something new from people who actually work there, ” he says. “I found myselflearning myriad screens that I never knew existed, and just how powerful the Bloomberg terminalreally is.”

Prior to entering the Bloomberg contest, Michael also created the Million Dollar PortfolioChallenge for Cass, which is a US-based ETF picking contest. Williamson helps educate thecontestants about how to create a watch list and keep track of one’s portfolio among otherthings.

He would like to stay in London and make a career in the asset management world. “That's whereI hope the CISI experience can help, with all the networking events it puts on.”

Key features of the Private Client Investment Advice &Management Certificate

A sound grounding of investment principles, risk, taxation and planning.

Access to higher level qualifications – successful completion can be used as entry to the

highly regarded Chartered Wealth Manager Qualification (http://www.cisi.org/cisiweb2/cisi-

website/study-with-us/wealth-retail/chartered-wealth-manager-qualification).

Suitable for a wide range of corporate finance staff; no previous qualifications are required.

Free CISI Student membership (http://www.cisi.org/cisiweb2/cisi-website/join-

us/membership/student-membership) – become associated with a Chartered professional

body and take advantage of an extensive range of benefits.

Access to full membership (http://www.cisi.org/cisiweb2/cisi-website/join-

us/membership/grades-of-membership#sectionC) and MCSI designatory letters.

Find out more about the certificate here (http://www.siservices.co.uk/brochures/img_pdf/pciam.pdf).



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Published: 27 Apr 2016 Categories: Features , People , S&I review

Tags: featured , Finance , ETFs , CISI exams , CISI , Back story

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S & i review back story michael williamson