Heeding his calling
Dan Watkins worked his way up from call centre employee to his current post as Apac chief of JPMorgan Asset Management. He spells out how a digital strategy will be transformative for his industry.
Genevieve Cua
WORK in a call centre, fielding calls from time-pressed and typically irate clients, is typically dismissed as a dead-end, tedious job. But Dan Watkins, Asia Pacific chief executive of JPMorgan Asset Management, is proud of his humble start in asset management more than two decades ago.
He worked for four to five years in the 1990s as a call centre employee at a town near London, and has risen through the ranks since. When he started at the firm in 1997, the traditional route to top executive roles was via a graduate trainee programme, a career path that still holds today.
"In my (current) role, I support graduate intake programmes or analyst associate programmes. They are of tremendous value. By rotating people through different functions they get to experience the broader business. But equally I'm quite proud that I didn't come in on the graduate programme. I joined in a call centre role and mapped my career from there.
Decoding Asia newsletter: your guide to navigating Asia in a new global order. Sign up here to get Decoding Asia newsletter. Delivered to your inbox. Free.
Copyright SPH Media. All rights reserved.
