Reading Time: 4 minutes Just back from a couple of great (sunny!) days in Edinburgh for the institute of actuaries conference which importantly this year incorporated pensions, investment and risk components together for the first time. Quite a lot of interesting takeaways and observations from around the industry. As Marian Elliott said in the first session “To the worm … More Two Days Among Actuaries
Reading Time: 2 minutes The future of asset and wealth management? A thoroughly excellent event was organised by Level39 in London on 25 May 2015, featuring speakers from all the key players and analysts in the fairly nascent European roboadvisor scene and around 250 delegates. My five top takeaways are below, or you can read my storify story here. … More Roboadvisor Europe 2016 – The Future?
Reading Time: 5 minutes This article first appeared in the May 2016 edition of The Actuary magazine (here) The past 10 years have been a uniquely challenging, volatile and uncertain period for UK defined benefit pension schemes. How well have they weathered the storm? We found out by analysing data published by the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) in its … More Taming Pension Risk?
Reading Time: 4 minutes UK pension funds have been through a hell of a ride over the last 10 years, and more. changes in regulation, longevity, interest rates, equity markets and the changing fortunes of sponsoring companies have all contributed to making the UK pension industry a tricky place. But are the lessons learnt relevant to other investors, particularly Sovereign … More Five lessons from UK Pensions for SWFs and Others
Reading Time: 3 minutes Market volatility this August caused many asset classes to be in the red when viewed over the year to 30 September 2015. We’ve long believed that to evaluate asset classes over long periods its more helpful to look at a measure of the risk-adjusted returns (such as the sharpe ratio) than pure returns – you … More Market Volatility Hits Asset Returns
Reading Time: 3 minutes We’ve been through an amazingly benign and profitable time for investors in many financial markets, something I discussed further here. That’s great to know, especially for those that participated. Not so helpful going forward. A better question is- What’s your expected future return from equities (and other assets)? Simple question, tricky answer. And one we … More Many Happy (Asset) Returns – part 2
Reading Time: 3 minutes I really feel that asset managers have stepped up their game in the last 12 months when it comes to posting content on twitter (I made this point in a previous post here), even the institutionally-focused managers who previously might not have seen much upside from the mass-market reach of twitter. I find good quality … More Which asset managers post the best content on twitter?
Reading Time: < 1 minute I think it’s fair to say that the asset management industry wasn’t initially quick to adopt social media as a means of distributing content. It’s understandable when you consider the level of regulation around financial advice and the required compliance particularly in the larger firms. Add to that the fact that for the more institutionally-focused … More Asset Managers & Twitter
Reading Time: 2 minutes We see literally hundreds of fund managers and investment strategies a year; which do we think are most likely to be successful in 2015? We really see three important things to focus on: risk, diversification, and freedom. Let’s take each of those in turn. Risk. This might sound obvious, but as we see it, the … More Which Investment Strategies Will Thrive in 2015 ?
Reading Time: < 1 minute Data from the Pension Protection Fund as of March 2015 shows that while the assets of UK pension funds have risen in value by 12% over the last year, falling yields have driven a fall in funding ratio of 13%. The aggregate deficit stands at £292bn (this is down slightly from a recent high of … More UK Pension funding ratio falls 13% in a year as yield swings continue
