‘He won the lottery:’ How WSC’s Pedro Gelabert cracked a client’s casino conundrum

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Name: Pedro Gelabert

Title: Senior advisor

Company: WSC Asesores

Location: Montevideo, Uruguay

Top of your to-do list:

One of my priorities this year is the development of two new markets in the region.

Best fund manager meeting:

My best fund manager experiences involve private meetings that stick to specific simple and relevant topics.

Worst fund manager meeting:

Those that include long and intensive talks with non-relevant information. On one occasion, a fund manager did not dedicate any of his time to talking about his fund or the economy, but instead took his space to talk about it.

Three funds on your radar:

I have been following the Calamos Growth & Income, SISF Global Sustainable Growth, and NB Flexible Income funds in order to focus on our medium term core portfolio.

A challenge you had dealing with a client:

One of my hardest challenges happened when a client called me to tell me he’d won the lottery in an online casino. The online casino was a new world for me, one I didn’t know anything about it, so I had to find out how to document the source of the funds. It was a tough challenge but finally I solved it.

I started from the basis of pretending to be a client who gambled to see the whole process. I contacted the gaming company and spoke with the director of operations of an international casino company to understand how they documented the prizes.

With all this, I then asked the client for this information and worked together with him until finally, with everything duly documented, we presented the case to the compliance officer and moved forward with the opening and subsequent deposit of the funds.

Favorite quote or motto:

Don’t give up, even if you’re defeated.

If you weren’t in this job, what would you be doing:

I would have been a pilot. Since I was a child I watched my father fly and for many years I have accompanied him to fly in many different aircraft.

Three dream dinner guests:

• Pope John Paul, for his leadership;
• Santiago Lange, the Argentine Olympic sailor and naval architect, for his incredible efforts during the seven Olympic Games he participated in and his achievement of winning a gold medal at the 2016 Oympics in Rio de Janeiro;
• Ricardo Romanelli, because I admire his mental strength even during tough times.

Advice for a newcomer to the industry:

My advice to the ones that are starting is to listen to senior financial advisors.