I had the pleasure of being invited to present to actuarial students and local professionals at Queens’ University in Belfast on the subject of current issues in investment, and careers in investment consulting.
I took the opportunity to give an overview of the global asset owner universe, talk through the portfolios of some of the world’s largest investors based on publicly available information, and then talk in more detail about two themes that I felt really came of age last year: ESG, and behavioural finance (for which I lent heavily on the excellent work of Daniel Crosby and Greg Davies).
There was an opportunity for a bit of audience polling interaction (thanks to the excellent polleverywhere.com system and their awesome integration to google slides). In an attempt to illustrate some of the behavioural finance points I managed to use a story to seduce 40% of the audience into giving an illogical answer, but failed to illustrate ego bias with a question about driving! Repeating a question often asked by Greg Davies it appeared that the audience was a little more loss-averse than the average (more than usual chose the smooth black line).
Thank you for having me – slides below!


