Interview with Julien Serbit on the ISFB Investment Advisor certificate: a practical program for financial advisors.

With over twenty years' experience in portfolio management, Julien Serbit has joined the ISFB team of lecturers for the ISFB Investment Advisor Certificate. His aim: to pass on practical knowledge from the field, demystify the nuts and bolts of investment and support private banking professionals in a rapidly changing environment. In this interview, he shares his background, his vision of the current challenges facing the profession and the strengths of this new certification program.

Mr. Serbit, this is your first time as a lecturer at ISFB, where you are taking part in the ISFB Investment Advisor Certificate program. Can you tell us about your expectations and approach as a lecturer?

I agreed to join the team of ISFB lecturers dedicated to the Investment Advisor certificate for a number of reasons. The first reason is that, after twenty years in portfolio management within structures of varying sizes, I regularly observed that many employees wished to better understand the portfolio construction and investment processes of the institutions in which they worked. It's not always easy to learn about these subjects in-house, especially if you're not in direct contact with the teams in charge of investing.

The second reason that motivated me to pass on my experience in a concrete way is common to many people: to teach practical, on-the-ground elements, rather than pure theory. In the investment business, we often find that once you've learned economic and financial concepts, they only partially apply in the real world.

Last but not least, it's always rewarding, whatever the field, to share one's experience and get new people interested in our business. I firmly believe that the success of the Swiss banking model depends on well-trained people. The ISFB, as a reference for the banking professions, convinced me to contribute to this program, thanks to the quality of its courses and speakers.

Can you tell us about your academic and professional background?

I studied economics and finance in the traditional way, with a university master's degree. I then moved on to Lombard Odier, Pictet and Reyl, before joining one of the leading independent wealth managers in France.

I have held a number of different positions within these establishments, all linked to portfolio management and investment strategy.

Today, I am involved in defining investment strategy and am responsible for selecting external products. I also manage several financial products (equities & multi-assets).

What do you see as the main challenges facing financial advisors today (in devising investment strategies tailored to customers' needs)?

The main challenge in our business is generational. The typical clientele of Swiss private banks is in full transition to the new generation. This generation is the first to trust (or not) Swiss expertise, without the lure of banking secrecy. They are also the first to have virtually all the tools they need to invest without necessarily having to go through a banker, as was the case for their parents and grandparents.

We need to demonstrate to this clientele that asset allocation and investment in general are still matters for specialists, despite the availability of tools that enable non-financial professionals to manage their money.

The task of "educating" certain clients with no experience of the financial markets has also evolved considerably, moving from popularizing the main concepts of portfolio management to the more delicate task of "demystifying" certain products or asset classes with sometimes misleading results, promoted in particular via online media and a continuous stream of information.

Last but not least, it appears that designing investment strategies has become more complex in many respects, particularly for international clients. When it comes to building up a diversified portfolio, tax and regulatory constraints are a further constraint. Financial engineering has not been left behind in recent years in terms of the complexity of certain instruments. The range of investable products, across all asset classes, has grown considerably, and it's clear that today's portfolios are often more sophisticated and complex than they were 20 years ago, without guaranteeing better results.

The ISFB Investment Advisor certificate will start soon (May 2025). How can this program offer concrete solutions? What, in your opinion, are the strengths and specific features that make this program so rich and valuable?

In my opinion, the program has many strengths. In line with what I've said above, it offers participants a very hands-on approach, taught exclusively by investment professionals. Practical experience therefore takes precedence over theory.

The program provides an understanding of today's main asset classes. It provides students with a valuable summary of the challenges of asset allocation. Who knows, it may even inspire them to specialize in one or more of the asset classes covered.

Finally, as mentioned above, this program enables anyone working in wealth management, or wishing to move into this field, to quickly acquire a solid foundation in portfolio construction, by mastering the fundamental principles and better understanding the jargon used by specialists. It offers students a global vision of an activity that remains at the heart of the Swiss banking offer, and whose scope of application is vast.

Julien Serbit

Senior Investment Advisor (Prime Partners SA)

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