Reading Time: 4 minutes Human longevity is always somewhat of a double-edged sword for those tasked with paying a defined benefit pension: increases in healthy lifespan are of course welcome from a human perspective, but make the job of providing a pension for life that much harder. And longevity has been very hard to forecast with any accuracy: from … More Living Longer, and Prospering
Reading Time: 2 minutes 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 … More An Evening with Actuaries in Belfast
Reading Time: 2 minutes A strange thought occurred to me the other day, hear me out on this for two seconds. Perhaps Defined Benefit Pensions are showing us a way forward in the future? I had just finished reading the excellent Stories from 2045, which as I summarise here contains many angles on the theme of managing (successfully or … More Universal Basic Income is DB v2.0
Reading Time: 2 minutes I was fortunate enough to recently read Stories from 2045 a great book of short stories from the futurist think tank The Economic Singularity Club which was founded by author & futurist Calum Chace and others to promote more thoughtful discussions about the future of jobs. The purpose of the book was to try and … More Stories from 2045
Reading Time: 2 minutes Some simple skills I think are underrated in today’s world of work: Planning effective meetings Facilitating effective meetings Capturing actions cleanly, and following up Structuring communication clearly and effectively These things don’t get talked about much, but when you work with someone who does them well it can be literally a life-changer, and so refreshing. … More Simple, but not easy
Reading Time: 8 minutes Updated March 2019 Do we need to get over our definition-anxiety? Ok, so I’m not going to win a prize for insight here in 2019 by observing that consideration of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance factors) has become a big theme in the UK, it has existed for a number of years kind of on … More Universal Owners: The Idea Reshaping Asset Management
Reading Time: 1 minute I recently posted the following to Linkedin and it received over 20,000 views and over 250 likes. There are a lot of correlation geeks out there! I think it also shows the appeal of dynamic data visualisations, and I think its a shame that standard packages such as excel do no cater to this. Dynamic … More A Lot of Love for Correlation!
Reading Time: 7 minutes The evidence is undeniable. We all have brains that are set-up to make consistently bad choices when it comes to domains that are complex, ambiguous and unpredictable – like investing. We overestimate our own ability, screen out information that conflicts with our pre-conceived views, we fear losses, and anchor to what feels well known and … More Better Behaviour by Design
Reading Time: 4 minutes In finance 101 you learn all about the two types of risk: systematic (market) and non-systematic (idiosyncratic) risk, but conventional teaching tends to ignore a third risk – Behavioral risk, which can be the most important. >> From @danielcrosby ‘s excellent book The Behavioral Investor which provides both a new taxonomy of behavioral biases from … More The Mis-behaving Investor
Reading Time: 5 minutes 1. The Universal Owner Did you go to many investment conferences in 2018? You probably don’t need me to tell you that ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) considerations have been brought front and centre this year. I think this theme can be interpreted at a higher level in terms of how asset owners weigh externalities … More Three Ideas that Came of Age in 2018
