Emma Crystal

Spear’s Review

A former relationship manager at Deutsche Bank, Emma Crystal rose through the ranks before joining Credit Suisse, where she spent 10 years. The Swiss giant might have gone pop, but Crystal didn’t. After a spell at UBS, she landed one of the plummest jobs in UK private banking as CEO of Coutts. 

In her first year in the role, Crystal has kept a low profile, gently bedding into her first chief executive role. At the same time she has embarked on a ‘quiet revolution’ that includes hiring a raft of new senior leadership executives from J.P. Morgan, HSBC and Barclays, and formulating a new strategy that aims to grow the bank’s appeal to UHNWs and to see it doing more wealth management on top of the banking that it’s long been trusted for. The bank’s AuM climbed by £2.2 billion in 2024, so something is going right. 

‘Emma is very impressive and calm,’ says an insider.

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