Alex Fray, chief executive officer of Boston Multi Family Office, tells us more about his job and life.

What was your career path and how different is it to any ambitions you had as a child?

I grew up in Sussex and, after completing a business and finance degree at Leeds University, moved to London where I joined an investment management firm and qualified as an accountant.

From there I moved into leveraged finance undertaking large infrastructure transactions and then worked on a trading start up in Belgium.

Coming back to London, I went into management consulting and started up another investment management company before a serendipitous meeting led to a job with Boston in the Isle of Man in 2014

It was very fortunate, as I had been looking to move out of London but wanted to remain in financial services in a high quality role and business sector - a series of chance events made it happen very quickly.

As a child I originally wanted to be a footballer or a vet so there’s been significant deviation since then!

You were promoted to chief executive officer of Boston in 2016. What is your vision for the company?

To continue to grow our footprint while remaining true to the values of being customer centric and providing high quality service, which come from our heritage as a privately owned single family office.

While Boston has now grown to a full commercial multi family office, offering trust and corporate services to international private and corporate clients, it’s important we retain that essence and culture from our roots. We’re about bespoke solutions and bespoke service, not the high volume, highly commoditised offering that we see in the growing trend of enormous ’supermarket CSPs’.

What will you do to make this happen?

I think the key to enabling and realising any strategy in business is to have the right people - a strong commercial and closely knit team in each of the respective offices who can also work collaboratively together as a group. That’s been a big focus for me.

What are your other priorities?

Ensuring that the vision is clearly communicated to everybody, and that the challenging targets that we set ourselves, both financial and non-financial, all flow consistently through the organisation so everybody is working towards the same goal.

What do you think will be the biggest challenges in the next five years - for your company and the Isle of Man in general?

All businesses need to adapt to a changing environment and that is certainly true for the fiduciary sector and the Isle of Man.

The sector is dramatically different now than it was five years ago and is likely to change again over the next five, particularly with the intensified international pressure brought by the Paradise Papers.

For Boston specifically, the biggest challenge we’ve got is in managing three fiduciary businesses at very different stages of evolution. We’ve got our headquarters in the Isle of Man, which is a very mature and very competitive fiduciary market, we’ve got a business in Malta which is a slightly less mature jurisdiction and at a different stage of its journey, and then we have an office in Dubai which is at a different, even earlier stage of development. So each presents different strategic challenges.

From an Isle of Man perspective, clearly the biggest challenge in the next five years is Brexit. While there are lots of risks - and equally lots of opportunities - from Brexit, there is currently a lack of clarity on what a post-Brexit world looks like. So the IoM has to ensure that its interests are taken into account by the UK Government when negotiating with the EU. We cannot afford to be used as a bargaining chip and we must think innovatively. One of the Isle of Man’s sustainable competitive advantages is the ability to be legislatively agile and we desperately need to innovate now to differentiate ourselves from other jurisdictions.

All businesses rely on their people for success. How do you attract and nurture talent?

It’s important to get people who are a good cultural fit as well as having the relevant experience and raw skills and capabilities, so we look at new recruits in the round.

We offer a lot of development and extensive training support for people to gain professional qualifications - and softer management skills too - and we promote based on contribution and productivity. We’ve promoted around 10% of our staff in the Isle of Man since April.

We also run Boston Link, a recruitment and headhunting business based in Malta but recently opened in the Isle of Man as well.

It focuses on financial services and E-gaming and was put into place because we could see that the biggest challenge for businesses in these sectors is recruiting the right talent and skill sets from the relatively small populations available locally.

They are particularly adept at relocations, which is useful given the Island’s need to import talent in many areas.

What are the unique selling points of your business?

Genuine multi-family offices are quite rare, and that really is the big differentiator between us and many other companies that offer similar services.

We are still family owned, which gives us a true independence that the big private-equity backed firms can’t offer.

We have carefully managed our service offering to avoid anything that might damage our impartiality, such as backing particular financial products. We’ve also managed to create a high quality international office network stretching to Malta and Dubai while remaining at a size that ensures clients still get a tailored service from a close-knit team.

Coming as I do from more of a technical background than many other chief executive officers, I also believe that we are set apart by our technology.

Recent events have only underscored the importance of technical infrastructure to the confidentiality and service of clients, and we have a robust network that would be the envy of providers many times our size.

What impact will new technology have on your business?

Technology has already transformed our business.

The way in which we deliver service to our clients is more efficient and improved because of the systems that we now use.

They are empowering, providing enhanced real-time information, smoother execution services, and lower charges.

There has been much talk about robo-advice in the sector but the complexity and bespoke nature of a family office means this is hard to achieve, and perhaps not currently desired by our clients.

However, advances in artificial intelligence and blockchain are likely to continue changing the landscape in the years to come.

How important is it for your company to play a part in the local community?

Very! Boston has always been active in the local community whether it is corporate fundraising or sponsorship of our staff fundraising for individual endeavours.

In particular Boston has been lead sponsor of Junior Achievement for six years now and around 10 to 20% of our staff in the Isle of Man has been involved with that in some shape or form over the last five years, including me.

The Junior Achievement programme is a really valuable initiative - it’s helping young people build entrepreneurial business skills which is particularly important on the Isle of Man where we’re looking to grow the population. Anything we can do to help nurture talent and entrepreneurship in young Manx people can only be beneficial to future job creation for the island.

We’ve also supported the Manx Workshop for the Disabled this year and we are supporting the Manx Breast Cancer Support Group’s Wheelie Big Driving Challenge on May 7 - that will be a great family day out, so put it in your diary!

Do you have an opportunity to promote the Isle of Man to the wider world? If so, what messages do you try and get across?

Along with my colleagues, I travel regularly to the UK, Ireland, Holland, Switzerland, Monaco, Malta and Dubai talking to clients, potential clients and intermediaries, and also speaking at conferences, forums, and round tables, so we have lots of opportunities to promote the Isle of Man.

The further away from the island you go, the less well known it is so the conversation you might have in London is quite different to what you might have in the Middle East, where it is possible you have to explain where it is!

Our message is that it’s a fantastic international finance centre facilitating trade and investment around the world, and a long-standing, trustworthy, safe jurisdiction for the protection and safeguarding of assets. Also that it’s a beautiful Island and a wonderful place to live and work and raise a family.

How would you describe your management style?

I’d say I’m a strategic thinker and strong communicator who likes to empower people and give them the opportunity to grow.

I back my team and expect loyalty from them in return - and, as chief executive officer of a medium-sized business, I’m willing to roll up my sleeves and get involved as necessary as well.

What do you think are the key qualities of a good leader?

Trust and truth. To be a good leader, people have to believe in you and to do that you have to be genuine so they can trust you.

There’s a whole range of personality traits that come with that: you can be charismatic, very strict, or someone who leads by example and all of those can work but the common theme running through is trust and respect.

What’s the best thing about your job?

Being able to operate in a high calibre international business, travel to interesting and exciting places, meet a diverse range of people, but then come back and live in the Isle of Man with my family. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to live here but still do those things.

What advice would you give to your younger self, if you were able to?

Be proactive in communicating and networking. I was always committed to doing a high quality job but I don’t think I understood the importance of communications and networking until later.

What are your interests outside work?

As I currently have three young children aged three and under, all my time out of work is taken up with being an active Dad and family man.

I’m looking forward to getting back into outdoor pursuits and sports with them as they get older.

Tell us something we might not know about you

I used to appear on Bloomberg TV commentating about diamond prices.