(picture: Angela Ashton) Comment by Angela Ashton and Vanessa Stoykov* Retail financial planning is at a bit of a juncture: FOFA, fee pressure, education standards, investor confidence, the bond bubble, changing demographics and lifecycle investing, SMSFs, limited licencing for accountants, continued competition from industry funds desperate to hold on to retirees. These are all issues…
(pictured: Graeme Arnott and Gerard Parlevliet) By Greg Bright Talking to Gerard Parlevliet and Graeme Arnott, winners of this year’s CIO and COO of the Year Awards, and you can discern some clear themes in how they approach their roles at big super funds. A major theme is that they need to be deeply involved…
BNP Paribas Securities Services has anointed Peter Baker to succeed Pierre Jond as managing director of Australia and New Zealand. Jond, who has been in the role for four years, will return to Paris at the end of the year. The company also announced last week that Michelle Crosbie, a New Zealander who had been…
(pictured: Andrew Mehrtens) Centric Wealth, the financial planning and individually managed account provider, has recruited another rugby international, former All Black Andrew Mehrtens, to market its platform and advisory services to super funds. Mehrtens joins an old rugby foe, Phil Kearns, the Centric CEO and a former Wallaby captain. Mehrtens, a history major who speaks…
The Sydney-based Australian Catholic Superannuation and Retirement Fund has appointed Towers Watson as its new asset consultant, replacing Russell Investments. The $5 billion 90,000-member public offer industry fund has 11 investment options. In the year to June 2012 the growth fund returned minus 3.4 per cent while the My Super balanced fund was minus 1.1…
After what has appeared to be a long hiatus, AMP is moving ahead with plans to offer asset management services to the Chinese market through its strategic alliance with China Life. A public disclosure last week for approval of a business name registration for China Life-AMP indicates the two are likely to go ahead with…
(Pictured: Martin Stevenson)Â In his 42 years in the superannuation industry, Martin Stevenson has seen some changes. Most, he says, have been for the better. But Australia still has a looming retirement incomes problem and the eventual solution is to legislate for some form of compulsory income stream system, he believes. Stevenson retired from Mercer…
(Pictured:Â Don Ezra) As super funds move away from traditional approaches to measuring their investment success, or otherwise, and the members increasingly focus on expected outcomes, the Fund Executives Association Ltd national conference next month will dissect the topic: “Measuring What Matters Most”. A keynote speaker will be Don Ezra, the Russell Investments global director emeritus,…
While the ramifications of the Eurozone’s debt concerns have heightened in recent weeks and with the euro finally coming in for a correction, the global investment risk research firm Check Risk has given Australia a better report in its latest weekly risk assessment. Check Risk produced an update on the velocity of money in the…
Chris Briant has been appointed chief executive of the Australian and New Zealand arm of specialist manager Parametric Portfolio Associates, one of the five affiliates of the listed US manager Eaton Vance, which has also been boosting its Australian presence in other ways. Briant finished up recently at Tibra Investment Management, where he was chief…
