Building a Culture of Excellence in a Changing Wealth Management Landscape

Crestbridge Family Office Services’ Chief Executive Officer, Heather Tibbo was recently recognised with WealthBriefing Channel Islands 2025 Leadership award.

In this interview Heather Tibbo shares perspectives on leadership, culture and collaboration following the recent industry recognition.

How do you cultivate a culture that consistently drives excellence and high performance?

Our service-driven culture is at the heart of what we do and is central to how we approach recruitment, training and develop our people. As a privately owned firm, our independence enables an exclusive focus on clients, allowing us to allocate resources, define processes, and refine our technical capabilities specifically to support their needs. This ensures the consistent delivery of service excellence.

A further key differentiator underpinning our high-performance culture is our commitment to resourcing our business based on clients’ specific needs, rather than headcount-to-client ratios. By prioritising client outcomes over financial performance, we are able to preserve and enhance our service-oriented ethos.

What role has collaboration – either internally or with external partners – played in your success?

Collaboration is fundamental to our ability to deliver value, given the relationship-driven nature of our services. Internally, we promote a non-hierarchical structure and cross-disciplinary teamwork, integrating expertise from different functions to provide seamless, holistic support.

Knowledge sharing is culturally embedded, and with open communication channels allow challenges to be addressed collectively and efficiently. Externally, we work with trusted specialists, technology partners, and industry networks to enhance our capabilities, access emerging insights and deliver innovative solutions. These collaborative relationships strengthen our service offering and accelerate problem solving, allowing us to stay ahead of industry developments and changing client expectations.

What are the key challenges you foresee in wealth management over the next five years, and how are you positioning your business to meet them?

Amid rapidly shifting geopolitics and a fast-evolving, AI-driven technology landscape, family office services are undergoing significant change. Our team continuously explores solutions that further improve operational efficiency, including automated reporting, research, and forecasting.

Families’ expectations are also changing. Sustainable and impact investing continues to grow, particularly among next-generation family members focused on long-term legacy. At the same time, family offices face increasing pressure to manage costs and drive efficiency, leading many to outsource functions to providers capable of delivering integrated, end-to-end services.

Cybersecurity also continues to emerge as a critical and increasingly sophisticated threat. Recent high-profile breaches have underscored the substantial disruption and financial consequences associated with cyberattacks, leading an increasing number of industry firms, ourselves included, to strengthen their security infrastructure.

How do you identify and develop future leaders within your organisation?

With ambitious growth plans, evidenced by our investment in strengthening our Executive Leadership Team throughout 2025, career development and succession planning are a critical element of our strategy.

We identify emerging leaders through systematic progress monitoring, collaborative career mapping, and, when appropriate, consolidated client feedback. This leads to a tailored appraisal process incorporating values-based criteria and resulting in a personalised development plan that reflects each colleague’s career aspirations.

Emerging leaders are increasingly given ownership of client relationships or other departmental initiatives, supported by senior mentors providing guidance and accountability. Regular talent reviews ensure transparency of process, while our culture of service and technical excellence empower individuals at all levels to grow, contribute, and prepare for leadership roles.

This article was published on 5 January 2026 in Acclaim magazine – The WealthBriefing CI Awards 2025.