Women in Financial Services
Inspiring Women - Lynn Maxwell
Mark.Freed / 05 Apr 2019
What’s interesting about the other E2W “Inspirational Women” pieces is that many of the women started in finance as soon as they left school or university. I, on the other hand, did not and thought about going down the route of academia. It goes without saying that my route to finance hasn’t been a straight road.
I’m Canadian and in my teens spent a year in France which I loved and which convinced me to go to university in Quebec where the courses were bilingual. I studied to be a lawyer after my degree and then two months into my training, decided that I wanted to change tack.
I wanted to become a specialist and becoming an academic seemed the ideal way. I had my sights set on becoming a professor of constitutional law and so spent another year in my beloved Paris where I concentrated on my dissertation on comparative equality law – gender equality and jurisprudence in European countries.
I loved living in Paris but found academia a solitary existence. I love being around people and sitting in a library for hours on end studying and writing wasn’t the right thing for me. Upon completion of my dissertation, I decided to return to Canada and finish my legal training.
After qualifying and a brief stint in Budapest where I helped to privatise the Hungarian electricity system, I returned to my home city of Toronto and started a position at law firm, Stikeman Elliott. I moved to London when offered a job at Clifford Chance in securitisation. That was twenty years ago – I moved eager to immerse myself in European culture and some interesting, complex, international deals.
I started working on pan-European securitisation deals at Clifford Chance and then, four years later, made the switch to investment banking. I had worked with BNP Paribas on some transactions and was then asked to make the leap and join them permanently as part of their in-house legal team supporting securitisation. I know it might sound ridiculous to some of you in banking but one of the reasons I moved was for the work life balance! Believe it or not, the WLB was actually better in banking than in corporate law where we would be regularly working through the night.
I found the transition to banking relatively easy and relished the added responsibility. Unlike at Clifford Chance, here I had the opportunity to see the whole deal, from origination to completion. Yes, I had to learn how banks work, how the leadership team operated and build relationships with bankers but I enjoyed the more entrepreneurial, client facing side as we pursued transactions.
I noticed that there were fewer senior women at BNP than there had been at Clifford Chance and this became more noticeable to me as I grew in seniority. Returning after taking a break to have my first child was interesting too: colleagues assumed that I was going to work part-time whereas I was ready to work as I had before and continue with my career. We had a chat and I explained my point of view and luckily it was resolved really quickly. If people don’t know, they will make assumptions – I learnt that it’s critical to communicate to challenge and change views.
I was headhunted by HSBC. Their structured finance business was in its infancy, had strong aspirations and I had a great opportunity to build the small team. I benefitted from some important sponsors in my direct boss and his boss too, who encouraged innovation and network building to sound out ideas, all in the pursuit of business growth and customer focus.
I think sponsorship is one of the most crucial aspects of career progression. Sponsors can make or break careers and as ‘the sponsored’ it’s important to identify their influence and use it to move forward. It sounds dramatic but if you don’t have people supporting you then you need to find some or move on, in my opinion.
I was at HSBC for thirteen years. I worked in structured finance throughout but would like to think that my impact was not just deals completed but pastoral aspects to working life too. I established a mentoring scheme for women whereby I matched up female MDs with junior women who wanted a mentor. It started out informally, but once HR saw its success, they took it over.
I also helped more junior women realise that there were senior female role models within HSBC! After overhearing one woman say that there were no female MDs in the bank (there were as I was one of them), I set up some breakfast meetings for women hosted by both female & male MDs. These informal round table discussions attended by C-suite level personnel, allowed those attending to build their network, make new connections and garner support for their careers. As I said, everyone needs a sponsor.
I have since joined S&P Global Ratings, which places a strong emphasis on mentoring and female leadership. The company has also published a number of recent research reports that leverage its data to show that greater participation by women in the workplace leads to stronger, healthier and more advanced economies.
I left the solitary existence of academia for the fast-paced world of securitisation where I was surrounded by people all the time. I had found a way of combining my law degree and love of solving complex problems with team work, something that has been a key part of my career and something I’ve really enjoyed. I would advocate the importance of interaction to everyone, whatever your career journey, as listening, explaining what you’re doing and building trust are essential steps in all of our journeys, be they straight or with the occasional twist and turn.
Read other stories in the Inspiring Women Series
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