Fieldpoint Private, the wealth advisory and private banking firm serving ultra-high-net-worth families and institutions, has announced that Juan Castañeda has joined the firm as Managing Director and Senior Advisor. His practice is based in Fieldpoint Private’s New York City office.
Mr. Castañeda joins Fieldpoint following a decade with UBS, where he served in a series of positions on behalf of Latin American families and institutions. Most recently, he was Executive Director of Emerging Market Credit Sales and Head of Latin America. In that role he worked with family offices, banks and pension funds across a range of capital markets and structured lending services. Prior to that, Mr. Castañeda was Executive Director and Head of Latin America for UBS’s Global Relationship Banking unit, based in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and a director in that business unit’s New York office, developing institutional relationships across Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
Mr. Castañeda said he came to Fieldpoint because he was looking for a firm in which putting the client first is a matter of practice, rather than simply rhetoric. “I had grown concerned about conflicts of interest and perverse incentives in large, traditional firms,” said Mr. Castañeda, noting that Fieldpoint Private is unusual in that it is fully unconflicted, with no in-house investment products and a strict philosophy against revenue-sharing arrangements with money managers.
“My clients have always had to accept the reality that having investment assets with big banks means tolerating conflicts of interest, whether with in-house products or so-called ‘open architecture’ platforms that collect fees from money managers,” he added. “They have become so accustomed to this, frankly, that it takes them a little while to fully realize that it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Fieldpoint Private President and CEO Robert Matthews said that Mr. Castañeda’s Latin American clientele is feeling increasingly unwelcome at larger global banks. “Conflicts of interest are only part of this picture. More and more, the major global banks are creating hurdles for international clients who wish to do business with them, from shutting down advisor teams to asking clients directly to take their business elsewhere,” he said. “We welcome this business, and we’re so pleased that Juan has decided that Fieldpoint is the right home.”