International Market Lead, Middle East in Bristol

In this high-profile role, you’ll act as the figurehead for the Coutts Middle East market, responsible for its growth, performance, and strategic presence. You’ll have the chance to create meaningful impact by driving exceptional private banking and wealth management outcomes for international wealth-creating clients from the region. You’ll have the opportunity to build a sustainable franchise by leading people, relationships, and strategy to drive outstanding outcomes for internationally connected clients.

As an International Market Lead for the Coutts Middle East market, you’ll be responsible for delivering the regional market strategy and overall performance. This will include making strong commercial decisions, developing robust growth cases, and converting opportunities into scalable business results. You’ll also act as Coutts’ senior commercial ambassador in the region, establishing and growing Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) and High Net Worth (HNW) client relationships, building deep networks across intermediaries and influencers, and maintaining a strong in-market presence through extensive travel and senior engagement.

Moreover, you’ll provide inspiring, culturally aware leadership to market-aligned colleagues, actively sales-managing performance and ensuring proposition alignment with regional expectations and regulatory requirements, while building capability, confidence, and disciplined execution. Alongside this, you’ll act as a prominent senior ambassador for the business in both the Middle East and the UK, developing and deepening direct client relationships, strengthening intermediary and referral networks, and maximising international connectivity and cross-border referrals.

You’ll also be:

• Building market presence and credibility through travel, senior networking, and active engagement in regional business communities, forums, and events across priority Middle Eastern jurisdictions.
• Leading the Middle East market to deliver high-quality client outcomes and achieve financial, customer, risk, and people objectives across the balanced scorecard.
• Driving financial performance through revenue growth, margin discipline, client acquisition, and cost management, ensuring strong commercial decision making translates into long-term franchise value.
• Shaping and evolving the Middle East client proposition to deliver culturally aligned, competitive, and relevant solutions for complex, internationally connected UHNW and HNW clients.
• Building and leading a high-performing team, developing colleagues, supporting succession planning, and embedding regular performance, development, and feedback cycles.
• Role modelling strong risk management across cross-border activity, complex client structures, and financial crime risk, working with Risk and Control functions to manage and mitigate market risks.
• Collaborating across internal markets, functions, and international teams to drive market growth and ensure the Middle East market is fully integrated within the broader international and bank strategy.

The skills you’ll need:

We’re looking for someone with extensive senior leadership experience in international private banking or wealth management, with a proven ability to build and scale a market or franchise from an early or under-developed position. You’ll also bring a demonstrable track record of leading market entry or early-stage growth, including strategy delivery, building teams, and establishing sustainable commercial and operating models. Moreover, you’ll need to have substantial, hands-on experience leading relationships with UHNW and HNW Middle Eastern clients, with strong origination credentials and a consistent record of new client acquisition.

Alongside this, you’ll have to bring a strong understanding of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) business culture, family and ownership structures, succession dynamics, wealth sources, and regional investment behaviours, applying this effectively in client engagement and decision-making. You’ll also need:

• A robust working knowledge of cross-border wealth structuring, lending solutions, and the regulatory considerations impacting Middle Eastern clients and internationally connected wealth.
• A strong leadership presence, with the ability to influence senior clients, intermediaries, and internal stakeholders, underpinned by high cultural intelligence, sound judgement, and empathy.
• A proven ability to lead successfully in relationship-driven, complex, and ambiguous environments where outcomes are influenced rather than directly controlled.
• Arabic language capability or significant experience working in Arabic-speaking environments, combined with a track record of leading through periods of market entry, expansion, or transformation.