I am responsible for how a family goes through the whole journey with BRIDGES: from the first meeting to the passport or residence card, and after it. Fifteen years of work with private clients, ten of them at BRIDGES.
10 yearsat BRIDGES, in Sergey Evdokimov’s team since 2015
15 yearsworking with private clients and family capital
BudapestBRIDGES head office, where Viktoria lives and works
3 languagesRussian, English, German
Path
Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Budapest
Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Budapest. First private banking and the money of families, then the moves of those families, and now the whole client practice of BRIDGES.
1987Saint Petersburg
Born in Saint Petersburg to an engineer and an English teacher. English from childhood, German from the age of fifteen.
2004-2009Saint Petersburg
Faculty of economics, world economy and international finance. Summer internships in a bank’s private client service.
2009-2015Moscow
Six years in private banking: personal manager, then team lead. Accounts, deposits, source-of-funds evidence, support for families moving part of their capital abroad. This is where it became clear: people do not need a product, they need one person who keeps the whole picture.
2015Sergey Evdokimov’s team
Joined Sergey’s team as a private client manager. First trips: the InvestPro conference in Almaty and a meeting with members of the Moscow City Golf Club. First matters: Greek residence and Cypriot citizenship for families from Moscow and Almaty.
2019-2021BRIDGES, Budapest
With the launch of BRIDGES she moved to Budapest and built a single service standard: one responsible manager per family, a clear plan with dates, a report on every step and document checks before filing.
Since 2022Managing Director, Private Clients
Leads the team of managers in all BRIDGES offices. Makes sure a client in Dubai, Limassol or Almaty gets the same level of service, and personally runs the families with the most complex tasks.
TodayBudapest
Responsible for the quality of support and the timing of every matter. Runs families with several generations in one application, student children and parents, where a move has to be tied to a school, a bank and a home.
Approach to cases
Six rules that do not depend on the country
The rules by which Viktoria’s team runs every family, whatever the country and programme.
01One person for the whole family
Every family has its own manager who knows the whole story. The client never has to explain anything again.
02A plan with dates from day one
After the first meeting the family gets a plan: what, when and who. If anything moves, we are the first to say so.
03Documents checked before filing
Every document is checked inside BRIDGES before it goes to the authority. An error we find costs nothing.
04An answer within one working day
Any client question gets a substantive answer the same working day, even if the answer is «we are checking with the authority».
05The whole family at once
Spouse, children, parents: everyone the move affects is in the plan from the start, not added later.
06We stay after the status
Renewal, bank, school, tax residence. The work does not end on the day the document is issued.
Talks and media
Conferences and client meetings
Viktoria travels to conferences with Sergey: after the talk, families come up to the team with questions, and the first consultations often happen right there in the hall.
At BRIDGES I make sure a family feels calm along the whole way. Sergey builds the strategy, the lawyers prepare the documents, and I stay in touch with the people: I know every family by name and remember whose child is starting a new school and who dislikes flying.
What I love most are first consultations. A person arrives worried, with a dozen open browser tabs, and leaves with a clear plan on one page. That moment is why I do this work: you can see people’s shoulders relax.
I grew up in Saint Petersburg, worked in Moscow, and for the last seven years I have lived in Budapest with my husband and daughter. I went through a move with a child myself, so I know in advance which questions come up a month after the move. Weekends are road trips: Vienna, Bratislava, Lake Balaton. Once a year a new country, often one where our clients live. I love the theatre and long breakfasts when there is nowhere to hurry.
ConsultationsClient familiesBudapestTrips across EuropeTheatre
Situations
What people come with
These are the tasks people most often bring to Viktoria.
The client wanted the whole family under one citizenship: his parents, himself and his wife, their children and grandchildren. Most programmes only include a spouse and children, but St Kitts allows a wider circle of relatives if the relationship and dependency of each person are proven.
I ran this family as one large project: a separate document list for everyone, from the grandmother to the youngest grandchild, and one shared schedule. The elders wanted no travel, the young ones wanted nothing to clash with their studies. Both worked out.
Outcome: Four generations of the family received citizenship in one application
A retired couple came not for an urgent solution but for peace of mind: they wanted a back-up option in case things changed. Relocation, long residence and language exams did not suit them at their age.
We went through the options honestly, and I talked them out of a more expensive programme: it solved problems they did not have. Saint Lucia requires neither living on the island nor exams. They signed the documents at home, with no extra trips.
Outcome: A second Saint Lucia passport for both spouses
Artem was twenty-three and studying in Hungary, and his student visa was ending together with his studies. He was weighing the usual routes: extend the visa, find an employer. Citizenship never crossed his mind.
At a first consultation I always ask about the family. It turned out Artem’s grandmother came from a Hungarian village. For him it was just a family fact, for us a basis for citizenship by descent. We gathered the records and proved the roots.
Outcome: EU citizenship instead of a student visa extension
The applicant wanted a second passport not only for his wife and children but also for his brothers and sisters. Almost every programme defines family as a spouse and children, and he was afraid his siblings would have to be left out.
Dominica allows brothers and sisters to be included when the programme conditions are met. We built a separate document pack for each of them and confirmed the conditions, and I kept in touch with every branch of the family at once, so nobody heard the news last.
Outcome: Dominica passports for the brothers and the sisters too
