Virginia Sweetingham of Gray & Farrar explains how for high net worth individuals introductions agencies are now just "one more professional in their entourage".

Editor's note: During this holiday season - now nearly over - this publication has republished some of the most popular and provocative features run since the start of 2012. Here is such an example; we hope readers enjoy the content and have plenty of comments.

As mother always said, money doesn’t buy you happiness and this is especially true when it comes to the love lives of the high net worth, who – despite their wealth – can lack that special someone as often as the man in the street. Cash-rich, yet invariably time-poor, the HNW can struggle to find an equal partner to share in their success, and while the search for love can be a minefield at the best of times, for the wealthy there can be even more need for guidance.

Enter boutique introduction agency Gray & Farrar, which, under the expert hand of founder Virginia Sweetingham, has been quietly building up a reputation as one of the best kept secrets of the international HNW community. Despite its low-key profile, the agency boasts clients in Geneva, Brussels, Monaco, Milan, Paris, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and New York, but it was Gray & Farrar's Mayfair headquarters from which Sweetingham took the time to demystify the world of HNW introductions.

A 25-year veteran of the professional introductions business, Sweetingham has a respect for discretion which would be the envy of the oldest of old school Swiss private banks. In fact, even the briefest of chats with the matchmaking supremo reveals numerous parallels between her firms and the wealth management industry; both serve demanding individuals who prize their privacy and both deal with the issues (ahem) closest to clients’ hearts.

The issue of dating agencies for the wealthy has garnered some pretty negative coverage in the UK press in recent weeks, with the Daily Mail exposing a disreputable agency which had “matched” one HNW businesswoman with a succession of eminently unsuitable candidates. “He went on about his boating holiday on the Thames... I prefer St Tropez,” was one particular standout quote from the unfortunate lady in question.

Such horror stories would rightly put anyone off, but a look “under the bonnet” of Sweetingham’s operation would quickly allay any such fears. As one might expect of an introductions agency charging a minimum fee of £15,000 (about $23,000) for international clients, Gray & Farrar is the Bentley of the matchmaking world and it quickly becomes apparent that - actually - the service represents pretty good value for money for those able to afford it.

A one-on-one approach

Gray & Farrar is the antithesis of what one might initially think of in terms of a matchmaking process as no pseudo-scientific “personality questionnaires” or sifting through endless profiles are involved. Instead, Sweetingham and her team apply a rigorous one-on-one approach whereby potential clients are interviewed in person about their past relationships and what they are now looking for.

Sweetingham is in fact sceptical of personality tests when it comes to matters of the heart, not least because the results of such tests can change in a matter of months. Instead, she takes an “intuitive and instinctive approach” to assessing potential clients whereby “you do genuinely know within a few seconds if they are in the right place” and potential matches will immediately spring to mind. Unapologetic for the stringency of her firm’s screening procedure, Sweetingham is resolutely unafraid to turn potential clients away.

On the one hand clients who are taken on board need to be ready for a serious relationship, but on the other hand they need to be happy within themselves. “Our clients don’t need a relationship, but rather they recognise that there is a missing piece in the jigsaw… if they don’t find the right person they’d rather be on their own,” she explained.

Privacy is paramount

As with private banking, client privacy is fundamental to Gray & Farrar’s proposition, but here the agency arguably puts financial institutions to shame. As well as no profiles or photographs being distributed, as this would constitute “an immense breach of privacy”, Gray & Farrar keeps no records whatsoever on computer - no high-tech data theft threats here then.

Running a business via handwritten records represents of course, in Sweetingham’s words, a “logistical nightmare” and it might be surmised that Gray & Farrar’s best asset is therefore its people. It is no surprise then that Sweetingham sees “scores upon scores” of applicants when recruiting for new staff. Successful ones must be “intuitive and have amazing attention to detail, along with being responsible, personable, supportive and understanding,” she says, and they also need to be able to build up intensely personal relationships while not overstepping professional boundaries.

One more expert in the entourage

Here, Sweetingham brings up an interesting point about bringing in the professionals when it comes to finding a life partner. As she points out, you would certainly employ an expert estate agent to find a dream home, and you would deploy a headhunter to find the ideal CEO for a company, and so why shouldn’t the same rationale apply to finding love. “Clients from all over the world use this type of service and view us merely as one more expert in their entourage,” she says.

One important part of the service provided by Gray & Farrar is that the agency effectively performs the “due diligence” on potential matches – something which is extremely important in this day and age. As Sweetingham explains, in times past people were a lot more static and it would be likely that you would know at least “someone who knew someone” connected to a prospective partner. Now, people are true “global citizens” this may not be the case and so it is much harder to figure out people’s motives and backgrounds.

In fact, it is this global mobility which has in part created such demand for Gray & Farrar’s services; jetting around the world to attend to various business matters or building up networks of friends in multiple cities due to a high-powered career may be glamorous, but it can mean that clients simply aren’t in one place long enough to find romance.

Over the past year the London-headquartered firm has seen a 50 per cent uptick in international business and now over 75 per cent of Gray & Farrar’s client portfolio is international. Other trends are an increasing number of female clients in their 30s and 40s, along with a growing book of business in Asia-Pacific. “China is now a hot market”, says Sweetingham, who also notes that female clients in Asia-Pacific are now increasingly happy to marry outside of their own culture. “Once you become truly international, ethnic background is less of a consideration,” she says.

While it may initially seem contradictory, Sweetingham attributes much of Gray & Farrar’s growth to the financial crisis, saying when the global meltdown hit “we’d never been busier”.  Many of these new clients worked in financial services and were suddenly confronted with the fact that their career didn’t necessarily represent the security they thought it did. “Many clients were thinking ‘I’ve given everything to my career’ and all of a sudden it became a very lonely world,” she explains.

Naturally, Sweetingham would not be drawn on any success stories from within the financial services space, nor the specifics of any other stories of lasting love. However, she was able to say that numerous marriages had come about via Gray & Farrar introductions, and there have even been cases of ex-husbands recommending the service to their erstwhile wives and parents who themselves met through the service referring their children. Success stories notwithstanding, Sweetingham is modest when it comes to the amount of credit her agency can take for these “happy ever afters”. “We see ourselves as facilitators,” she says, “what underpins our client base is that all of them are educated and successful, and have reached the stage where they want someone to share their life with.”