Private Wealth Management interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

22

Firms

13

Updated

September 2026

Asked at

All firmsAllianceBernstein4Goldman Sachs4Northern Trust3J.P. Morgan2MSMorgan Stanley2Scotiabank2AMAres Management1BMBNY Mellon1Carlyle Group1Invesco1Neuberger Berman1SCSchroders1UBS1

Topic

All topicsClient discovery5Risk profiling4Asset allocation and rebalancing7Investment policy statement3Tax and asset location6Concentrated positions3Estate, succession and philanthropy6Fiduciary and trusts3Alternatives and liquidity4Products and platforms7Fees and conflicts4Bank economics and risk2Behavioural finance3Family governance3Onboarding and compliance3Business development6Fit and career15Markets and economy9Case and estimation7

Level

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Type

AnyTechnicalCaseMarket viewFitBrainteaser

1. 019Draft the objectives and constraints section of an investment policy statement for a 58-year-old who has just sold his business for 120 crore.Investment policy statementHardcase studyFamily officesIndian wealth management

   Say this

   Objectives: fund his spending for life in real terms, keep a defined reserve liquid, and grow the surplus for the next generation and his philanthropy. Constraints: a hard liquidity reserve, a cap on illiquid assets, a drawdown limit, the tax structure, and a rule against re-concentrating in anything that looks like his old business.

   Then walk it

   1. Objective one, the lifestyle portfolio. Say he spends 1.5 crore a year. Funding that in real terms for forty years needs roughly 40 to 50 crore at a conservative real withdrawal rate, so that sleeve gets a low-volatility mandate with a drawdown limit around 10 percent.
   2. Objective two, the legacy and philanthropy portfolio, the remaining 70-odd crore. Multi-decade horizon, equity-dominated, and the drawdown tolerance here is 30 percent plus, because nothing is being withdrawn from it.
   3. Constraint one, liquidity: a minimum of three years of spending, so around 4.5 crore, in cash and short-duration debt at all times, and it is not available to the optimiser.
   4. Constraint two, illiquidity: a cap on drawdown-locked assets, say 20 percent of total, with committed but uncalled capital counted against the cap. He has just come from an illiquid asset and does not need another one.
   5. Constraint three, tax and entities: which sleeve sits in his name, which in his wife's, whether an HUF or a private trust holds the legacy pool, and the fact that debt funds are now taxed at slab so the fixed income sleeve is built accordingly.
   6. Constraint four, the behavioural one, written explicitly: no single position above 5 percent, no unlisted investment in his old sector without a joint review, and a twelve-month cooling-off on angel investments. A recently exited founder's biggest risk is putting it all back into something he thinks he understands.

   Where candidates lose it

   Writing generic constraint language. The whole point of this case is that a freshly liquid founder has specific failure modes: re-concentrating in his old industry, getting talked into a dozen angel cheques, and treating the entire 120 crore as risk capital because he built it by taking risk. Name those in the document.

   Expect next

   • What withdrawal rate did you use and why?
   • How would you handle the twelve months right after the sale?
   • Where does the philanthropy sit structurally?

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.