- Ayesha Ofori worked in wealth management for Goldman Sachs for six years.
- She told Business Insider she left to start her own business, an investment platform for women.
- Ofori shared wealth-building strategies she learned from managing her ultrawealthy clients’ portfolios.
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 40-year-old Ayesha Ofori, CEO of Propelle, from London, about her experience working at Goldman Sachs. Business Insider has verified her employment. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I joined Goldman Sachs in New York in July 2012. Before that, I’d studied for an MBA at Columbia Business School. While there, I interned at Goldman Sachs.
At the end of my training in wealth management in New York in September, I moved to London to work at Goldman’s UK office in wealth management. If you’re in banking, there’s nowhere bigger.
If you’d asked me what success looked like at the time, it would’ve been being a partner at Goldman Sachs. The culture suited me because I’m an alpha.
Several years later, I quit to start my own business, helping women close the investment gap. At Goldman, I helped rich men get richer, but I also learned lessons about wealth management from Goldman and my own experience that I wanted to share.
The clients I managed often had over $10 million
As a wealth manager, I looked after individuals’ private wealth.
My job was to find potential clients with at least $10 million in cash or an easily liquidated asset class, like stocks and shares, who were interested in opening an account with us.
The majority of my clients were trying to preserve their wealth, but some were still trying to make money.
How the client structured their portfolio would depend on whether they were in wealth preservation or wealth accumulation mode and on their knowledge of different products.
Normal people can learn from the rich
At Goldman, I made rich men richer every day, but I didn’t feel like I had a seat at the table. I wanted to use my skills for something more positive. I quit in 2018 to start my own business in 2019.
I noticed there were things that wealthy people did to build wealth that were different from how normal people managed their money, such as their approach to savings, investments, and debt.
The philosophies I saw in terms of wealth building at Goldman, I’m trying to bring to my business, Propelle, a platform to help women close the investment gap with men.
Saving money isn’t enough
When I was at Goldman Sachs, I noticed we didn’t have many women clients. I did some research and realized that, in the UK, women are good at saving money but not investing it.
Women are paid less and are often the ones who take time away from work to care for children or older relatives. The pension gap between men and women in the UK is 40%. Many women reach the later stages of their lives, and they don’t have enough money to maintain their standard of living.
The wealth gap between men and women is big, and women must catch up. Why aren’t we investing like the wealthy do? All my clients were investing in some way.
When I worked at Goldman Sachs, I was focused on paying off my student loans and saving money. I realized the last place my money should be is sitting in the bank, doing nothing.
I created an investment portfolio, like I would for my clients, and invested in real estate. That financial safety net helped me leave Goldman and start my own company.
Investing is about having a long-term time horizon. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s about thinking about the future, creating a plan, and investing steadily. I want women to get to the point where they are investing monthly.
Invest in alternatives
At Goldman Sachs, there were different ways to create client portfolios. One strategy was called “core-satellite.” In the middle, they would have traditional investment classes, such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Around that core layer, there was a satellite layer of alternatives, which a lot of clients came to Goldman to access.
Many investment platforms focus too much on traditional investments. Wealthy people are more able to take calculated risks because they have the tools and advisors at their disposal.
I want women looking to start investing to have access to alternatives, too. For example, it could mean investing on a small scale in startups, art, or wine as non-traditional investments to have in their portfolio.
It’s not exactly the same as at Goldman Sachs. For example, I don’t think everyday people should invest in hedge funds. But they could invest in similar things, such as startups, where the risk and reward can be higher.
There’s generally a lower minimum investment for investing in startups — as little as $20 sometimes. It’s slightly different from investing $10 million like a Goldman Sachs client might, but the principle is the same.
With Propelle, my investment app, the plan for users is to focus on having both traditional and alternative investments. It’s about taking a calculated risk, not a blind risk.
Debt isn’t always bad
I noticed wealthy people are good at making money with money that isn’t theirs through borrowing. It’s one of the biggest drivers for building wealth.
I look at debt as financial engineering. It is a tool.
You can use debt as a tool to generate wealth, but everyday people don’t see it that way. Many people are terrified of debt. My mom is one of them. She wants to be able to pay off her mortgage, and she doesn’t want a credit card.
I encouraged her to think of a mortgage as a tool. An example is if you release equity from a property you own and pay 6% on the borrowed money. You could use that money to invest in a property development project with projected 20% returns. The 14% difference would be income, not considering taxes. It depends on interest rates, but that’s a no-brainer.
Risk is clearly a factor because the 6% interest rate is guaranteed however, the 20% returns aren’t. A clear plan for expected returns and timelines or a contingency plan is important if you’re taking on risk.
I’ve seen a lot of wealthy clients borrow money against their stock portfolio and use it to invest in something else. It could be on stocks and shares or property. You’re hopefully generating a return on your stocks and returns on your second investment. You started with one pot of money, and now you have two generating returns for you while paying a lower interest rate on your debt than your returns.
Wealthy people are doing that, just on a different level.
This works if the market is growing throughout your investments. If the market falls and you have a loan, you’ll still need to make payments. It’s great to make your money work as hard as possible, but you need to ensure you’re taking calculated risks and have contingency plans.
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