Centtrip appoints new chairman, David Witzer

With over four decades’ experience in financial services, David brings to Centtrip a deep expertise in global and inter-jurisdictional operations, governance, risk and business management. He is a member of the CFA Institute, a fellow of the CISI and sits on a range of advisory and industry boards.

We sat down with David to discuss everything from early influences to life-changing experiences.

Hi David, thank you for your time. Just to start us off, what experiences have most influenced how you think about leadership, today?

Great question. I think you learn a lot from seeing bad things as well as good. For me, three people I have worked with have influenced how I think about leadership. The starting point was my very first job, at M&G back in 1984. I was a young, fresh-faced kid and our team manager was a somewhat pompous, old, colonel kind of guy who insisted everybody called him Sir. He was a difficult guy to be around. You’d see fear and panic when he’d tell people off in front of everyone else. He never really engaged with the team, preferring to manage through fear and threat. Yet, when he retired, he said how much he’d enjoyed working with me and how he saw a great future for me. I learned a lot about what not to do from him.

Later, at the same company I worked with a gentleman called Lyndon Turner who was the polar opposite of the colonel. He had a really collegiate approach to managing teams. He had  played a lot of sport and I think that led to him appreciating the value of the team. He could be tough if he needed to be, and he was very precise, but he had a way of getting people to buy into his way of doing things. So I still look back at those two as reference points for bad and good leadership. But certainly the biggest influence on me, especially around governance controls, is a gentleman called Olaf Rogge [of Rogge Global Partners] who’s a very dear friend of mine to this day. He was a lovely, lovely man but quite hard. He insisted on very high standards, morals, kinds of behaviours; even how you present yourself. He didn’t dictate, but he would pick you up on things when they were not to his exacting standards. I learned a lot from him. He was a great people manager.

There’s sometimes confusion about what a chairman does. How do you define the role?

It depends on the nature of the firm; how big it is, how structured etc. and of course there are different aspects to the role. There’s the formal chairman role which is quite functional and legally-defined: running board meetings, corporate governance and so on. There’s also a personal element to that of shareholder and stakeholder engagement, ensuring good behavioural outcomes. Then there’s an aspect of using your personal knowledge and skills to advise, guide and help enhance the business. And lastly, there’s the role of representing the business, of networking and making introductions for the team.

And what attracted you to the chairman role at Centtrip?

I remember hearing about Centtrip around the time it first started and I’ve followed its journey over the years. I’ve known many of the people involved and Olaf Rogge, who I mentioned before, is a shareholder. That’s how the discussion about the role of chairman began.

I think it’s a gem of a business, but it hasn’t been fully polished. That’s what attracted me. The DNA, the heartbeat of the firm is very entrepreneurial and it’s such an interesting concept. With just a bit of care and nurturing it could be something really special. It has all the ingredients that I love in a business. It has a team of really good, smart people; that’s important to me. I love working with kind, honest, hard-working people. And, Centtrip has huge upside potential.

When you think about what Centtrip does in each of its vertical sectors, the technology it has embedded in its structure, and how the world is moving towards whole life cycle solutions, I think the business is super well placed.

The challenge will be all the regulatory hoops to jump through and the cost and processes required to do that. That’s a challenge for a lot of smaller firms and it’s one that really excites me about Centtrip. It’s an area where I believe I can add value and help.

You’ve been involved in a couple of charitable activities. You provide career advice to under-privileged teenagers and you founded the Khao Lak Redevelopment Fund. Can you tell us a little about those?

Yes, so, on the career advice, I didn’t come from a privileged background myself and I’ve always felt a bit of affinity with kids from a similar background. You know, no matter who you are, or where you come from, there's always some challenge in front of you, some door, some bump, some step. And you have a choice. You can either push through it or use it as an excuse, or just back off. We do it every single day, but some people come from environments where they have more of those than others. I felt that, if I could share my personal experience with kids who are facing similar sorts of challenges, it might help: how you deal with challenges in front of you, what motivates you to fight rather than give up, those kind of things. I just felt I could give something back.

If you just make a difference to one person's life, you've done something good, haven’t you?

And Khao Lak?

That’s really a story for over a beer but, when the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 hit Thailand, my wife and I were there on the beach at Khao Lak. We were torn apart and for four days we each thought the other was dead. We were both badly injured but we survived and, of course, no matter what trauma we went through, we came back to England to our home and our support network. But the people living there, who had nothing in the first place, had their whole livelihoods, their homes and their families destroyed. They were so much worse off than us, yet they gave everything to help.

In that area, with so much tourism, the adults worked in the big beachfront hotels while the kids’ schools were further inland. In the school that we decided to help – that we set up the Khao Lak Redevelopment Fund to support – 90% of the kids had lost at least one parent. There was a whole cohort of school kids that we felt we could help.

David, thank you for sharing so much of your background and thoughts. Just one last question: when you’re not working on all these things, what takes up your time?

Well, I love spending time with my family. I have grandkids, which is a lovely thing. I love golf and I’m a passionate wine collector. We have a house in Burgundy, so I spend a lot of time there trying to find undiscovered  wine producers. My wife and I also love old architecture and refurbishing houses. I never have free time because I’m always busy doing some of all of those things.

David, thank you again and congratulations on your new role as chairman of Centtrip.

David Witzer biography

David Witzer is Group COO and a member of the Board at Plurimi Wealth LLP. He has more than four decades of experience in financial services with a particular focus on asset and wealth management, corporate strategy and integration.

He has held a number of senior leadership roles including CEO of Fossar Markets UK Ltd, CEO of Tokio Marine Rogge Asset Management, and COO of Rogge Global Partners PLC. He brings deep expertise in global and inter-jurisdictional operations, governance, risk and business management, and holds an LL.M. in International Business Law from the University of Liverpool.