Some members are excited for retirement, while others approach it with a “real sense of shame and fear”. Funds are going to have to figure out how to cater to both groups or risk failing them all.
If there’s one lesson for investors from the past five years, it’s that chopping and changing their strategy – even in the face of massive market turmoil – doesn’t always pay.
Frontier boosts quant team
Frontier Advisors has expanded its quantitative investment team to eight people with the recruitment of Marcus Nelson, who starts tomorrow (it’s a public holiday in Victoria today).
Nelson was previously with the Melbourne hedge fund manager Kaiser Trading Group. Kaiser was formed by former NAB trader Anthony Kaiser and NAB currency manager Karl O’Shaughnessy in 1988. The two had a falling out 10 years later after the manager had grown to about $2 billion under management.
In his new role Nelson will report to Frontier’s head of quantitative solutions group, Michael Sofer. The group’s work underpins Frontier’s technology offering, which is a key differentiator in the increasingly competitive asset consulting landscape.
In a statement last week the firm said: “Frontier has invested heavily in this area in recent years and has now built an eight strong quantitative team with skills and experience drawn from a range of sectors and overseas markets. This reflects the firm’s view that increasing client sophistication, particularly from superannuation funds’ internal investment teams, will require more advanced services from asset consultants, and, that those services will extend beyond the traditional investment areas.
“An example of this lies in the release this month of a product called Glide which allows superannuation funds to compare their investment performance with that of their peers, both in terms of fees and returns, but also enabling attribution of performance. Like other elements of the Frontier Partners Platform, Glide is an interactive tool that enables users to complete their own research and analytics.”
Damian Moloney, Frontier’s chief executive, said: “We’ve seen an enthusiastic take up from the market for our various software solutions, and particularly our portfolio analytics models and investment manager research. However, Glide will have wider application within funds allowing investment teams, product teams and even marketing teams to analyse their offering relative to their peers and competitors.”
