Forged by our past, poised for the future

Anne Richards was appointed Chair of Coutts in September 2025.

Anne brings substantial financial services and wealth management experience to the Board. She is currently Vice Chair of Fidelity International, having previously served as their Chief Executive Officer since 2018. 

Anne is a Non Executive Director of Land Securities and a Trustee of the Queen Elizabeth Prize Foundation. 

She was previously Chief Executive Officer of M&G Investments and Global Chief Investment Officer at Aberdeen Asset Management.

Anne has worked in the asset management industry since 1992, including nearly twenty five years as an analyst, portfolio manager and CIO, across a number of global investment firms including JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch Investment Managers.

Anne’s previous non-executive positions include Director of Esure Group Plc. Anne is currently Chair of TheCityUK Leadership Council and a member of the European Advisory Panel for Temasek.

Emma Crystal joined NatWest Group as CEO of Coutts and Wealth Businesses on 1 July 2024.

Before moving to NatWest Group, she was Lead, Sustainable Finance Group at UBS and Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) at Credit Suisse where her responsibilities included setting the sustainability strategy and ambition for the bank and partnering with the divisions, regions and functions, to deliver their sustainability commitments. These included expanding the wealth management product shelf, investment banking financing offering and net zero deliverables.

Previously, Emma held a number of senior leadership positions at Credit Suisse including leading the Wealth Management business for Northern & Western Europe. Prior to that, she also covered Family Offices for the UK and Nordic markets.

Before joining Credit Suisse, Emma worked in Global Markets at Deutsche Bank for 10 years.
Emma graduated from Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden, with a master’s degree in Economics and Business.

Emma is a member of the Executive Committee of NatWest Holdings and also sits on the Coutts Board in her capacity as Coutts CEO.

Mark joined Coutts as Non-Executive Director in 2015.

He has more than forty years’ experience in the financial services sector and has operated at Director/CEO level for the last thirty years in both plc and private businesses in the UK and internationally. He is a former CEO of St James’s Place plc and has also had a spell on secondment as the CEO of Virgin Direct. Prior to this he was a Director of Henderson Investors plc and a consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton.

Mark has worked as an independent non-executive director for the last fifteen years. He is the Chairman at the UK’s largest estate agency group, Connells Ltd. Previous appointments include Deputy Chairman/senior independent director at Skipton Building Society, Deputy Chair of GB Snowsports, Chair of MyCSP Ltd the civil service pension administrator and Chairman of Equiniti’s regulated financial services business.

Mark has a Masters degree in Transport Economics from the University of Leeds.

Sharmila began her career in strategy consulting and has broad sectoral experience across health, media, utilities and financial services from both the private and public sectors. She serves as a Non-Executive Director at Halma Plc, ITV Plc and Severn Trent plc and is Chairman of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the organisation responsible for assessing the clinical and cost effectiveness of medical innovations in the NHS. She is appointed by HM Treasury to chair the Sovereign Grant Audit Committee and sits as Non-Executive Director for the Lord Chamberlain’s Committee of the Royal Household. She also serves as Trustee of the Governing Council of Oxford University where she chairs the Audit and Scrutiny Committee.

In her executive career, Sharmila spent 15 years at the BBC, latterly as Chief Operating Officer for BBC Future Media and Technology, the division that built the iPlayer, and was most recently Chief Executive at Wilton Park, an executive agency of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office convening international dialogues for senior policy makers from around the world with a special focus on global health.

Sharmila read Medicine at the University of Oxford and has been a World Fellow at the University of Yale since 2007. She is also a chartered accountant and was awarded an OBE in 2014 for services to medical research.

Patrice McDonald brings over 25 years’ experience of Wealth, Asset Management, Investment and Retail Banking knowledge to the Board. Currently Non-Executive Director & Chair of the Risk Committee of Brown Brothers Harriman’s Irish Entity and Senior Independent Director and Chair of the Risk Committee of Allica Bank, she has also chaired the board of TD Bank Europe, TD Global Finance and Marshall Wace Asset Management, and been a Board Director at Davy Group, and Simcorp. Previously, Patrice was the Global Chief Risk Officer for Barclays Wealth & Asset Management.

Jakob Stott brings extensive experience from his career in Financial Services across many continents. He was previously both Group CEO and a member of the Board of Directors at Quintet Private Bank. Prior to this, he held numerous leadership positions in the Capital Markets and Derivatives businesses of both UBS and JP Morgan, as well as Emerging Markets, in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Singapore. Jakob was Chief Operating Officer for JP Morgan, EMEA and CEO, Wealth Management Europe for UBS in Zurich, alongside other positions.

Mark joined Coutts as Non-Executive Director in 2025

He brings extensive retail banking and financial services expertise to the Board, alongside broad experience at board and committee level.  As a chartered accountant and with 12 years’ experience on the Board of Nationwide as CFO, Mark brings a blend of technical knowledge and a deep understanding of the financial services sector.  He serves as a Non-Executive Director of NatWest Holdings Limited, National Westminster Bank plc and The Royal Bank of Scotland plc. In addition, he is the Risk and Capital Committee Chair of The Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Limited.

Mark is a chartered accountant with over 30 years’ experience in financial services. He began his career at Price Waterhouse (now PwC), where he spent over ten years as a partner specialising in financial services. He was CFO of Nationwide Building Society from 2007 to 2019. From 2020 to 2023 Mark was an independent non-executive director of TSB and Chair of the Audit Committee.