The wealth and investment management arm of Barclays has continued its regional build-out with the addition of private banker Cecelia Russell to its Birmingham office.

Russell has been recruited under Barclays’ Embark initiative, which brings in staff from other industries and trains them to become wealth managers. She was latterly post-graduate programmes manager at Warwick Business School, a role in which she ran a portfolio of finance-related Masters courses.

Barclays is far from alone in looking to recruit talent from other sectors, with ex-military personnel and even former top-level sportspeople being regular recruits in the wealth management space. As far as this publication is aware, however, Barclays is the only firm to have formalised its aim of bringing in new blood (and fresh perspectives) from industries unrelated to wealth management.

In other recent hires in the UK regions, last month saw Barclays add private banker Debbie Cotton to its Reading office. Cotton previously spent five years as a wealth advisor at Towry.

The wealth and investment management division of Barclays has also added to its offices in Glasgow, Aberdeen and Essex in the past few months.