Career spotlight series: Kevin Hellard Offshore Delivery Leader and UK Insolvency and asset recovery practice leader

#GTOffshore is a global team with a diversity of experience both in terms of skill sets and backgrounds.

While a career as an insolvency practitioner may not have initially been front of mind, Kevin Hellard , Partner and Offshore Delivery Leader and UK Insolvency and asset recovery practice leader, Grant Thornton UK , explains the many facets of insolvency that keep him engaged and excited to this day.

Born in Solihull, just outside of Birmingham to a salesman father and stay-at-home mother, Kevin had once considered joining the marines or even a career in the police, the latter of which would have seen him follow in footsteps of his grandfather. But in the early 70s when his father’s job had relocated the family to Weston-Super-Mare, he went to local schools and then onto technical college to study A Levels. At this stage he had no idea which path his career would take.

“At that time, I recall seeing technical college as a way of filling time until I could obtain my driving license, which would then lead to a job of some sort. It was my tutor at technical college that made me fill out an application to go to university,” he says.

Having secured a place reading law at Cardiff University, Kevin admits he was not particularly academic, much preferring sport over studying. However, after graduating and moving on to law school, he secured a training contract within a large law firm, but with a year to wait to begin the contract, Kevin made a career-defining choice to interview with the insolvency team of an accountancy firm in Bristol, known then as Robson Rhodes, and which would later become part of Grant Thornton UK in 2007.

“I thought I must have had a great interview and convinced the partner that I knew everything there was to know about insolvency and – on that basis – I was offered the job. In hindsight, I think they were just desperate to get people at that time. That said, I’m not sure that anyone sets out to have a career in insolvency, it sort of evolves, which is why I think that insolvency has such a wide diversity of experience among its practitioners,” Kevin notes.

Looking back over his early career, Kevin had always felt a little different to those that he worked with and tried hard to fit in and be accepted. “I wasn’t (and am still not) an accountant, I wasn’t from a public school, and I had a West Country accent. I always saw this as something that held me back a little and I strived to be more like those around me.”

However, as time went by, he began to notice “missed opportunities” in the way his department approached certain things and started to see where his differences could be used to their advantage: “I started to realise that my background and my experiences enabled me to see things in a different way and identify opportunities that others didn’t spot. Far from suppressing my differences and trying to fit in I learnt that being different was actually a way of promoting myself,” he explains.

Many years ago, a very experienced practitioner had said to Kevin “the thing about insolvency is that you learn something new every day”.

Fast forward to today and having recently just passed on the baton of Presiding over the Insolvency Practitioners Association, Kevin said there have been many times he has remembered those words, saying: “I always find myself coming across situations that excite me and compel me to want to uncover more. From working with lawyers, creditors, governments to investigating corruption, giving evidence in court, developing our #GTOffshore expertise across key onshore and offshore jurisdictions to just grabbing a coffee with a member of the team and hearing how their day is going, insolvency has so many paths, it invites you to grab opportunities and explore where they may take you.