10th Fund Summit
31 October 2023
The Fullerton Hotel Sydney
Agenda
09.00-09.10 // Welcome and conference opening
09.10-10.00 // Reading the runes: navigating the industry into 2024
The industry landscape has been evolving quickly over the course of the past year or so, as mergers abound, and market conditions remain challenging. This session will explore the key drivers affecting superannuation and asset management business models in the short to mid-term, along with considerations for navigating them:
- Consolidation and evolving business models: the future of superannuation and asset management.
- YFYS and Choice products: how will it pan out – the next tranche of industry consolidation or mired in technical complexities?
- Executive priorities – where are the opportunities and how can firms position for success?
10.00-10.45 // Business transformation: evolution or revolution?
As various industry drivers heighten competitive pressures, how can investment organisations make significant progress by adopting technology and services to streamline and industrialise?
This panel will provide a peer perspective of operating model considerations and transformation projects that are currently underway across front, middle, and back-office functions. It will examine:
- Key objectives.
- Defining strategy, architecture and the role of outsourced service providers.
- What comes first: streamlining change projects, avoiding unnecessary overlap and maintaining flexibility.
- Challenges and lessons learnt.
10.45-11.15 // Refreshments and networking
11.15-12.00 // Tooling up for the future: facilitating more complex investment portfolios
As the imperative to deliver performance builds and market volatility increases, constructing portfolios and managing risk becomes trickier. This session will discuss how firms are approaching upgrading their investment technology to better manage more complex portfolios, including the skills, processes and systems that can help optimise performance.
- Optimising insights: delivering real time positions and risk analysis across individual asset classes and the whole portfolio view.
- Implementation and execution: optimising rebalancing, tilting and synthetic exposures.
Jacey Wheelwright
Senior Manager – Capital Markets Support,
Australian Retirement Trust
12.00-12.45 // Strengthening operational resilience in 2024
Bank collapses, service provider outages and data breaches, coupled with a growing regulatory focus on operational risk management has focused the spotlight on business continuity, service provider oversight, and incident and control management.
This session will discuss the lessons learnt from recent events, and how to oversee and encourage and strengthen resilience both internally and across your service provider ecosystem.
- The year in review: lessons learnt.
- Operational resilience as key driver of transformation – where are organisations focusing their efforts?
- Evaluating key internal; service provider and potential systemic risks.
- Beyond CPS 230: best practice operational risk management.
Shree Nagarajhan (Chair)
Head of Compliance & Operational Oversight,
Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation
12.45-13.45 // Lunch & networking
13.45-14.15 // Service provider selection: longevity, stability and growth
A solid partnership with service providers is an essential component of a well-functioning investment business. Conversely, where roadmaps – whether technological or strategic – diverge significantly, they can also hinder growth plans and complicate operations. This presentation will discuss considerations in selecting and overseeing service providers; ways to keep things on track and contingency planning:
- Governance practices.
- How can organisations manage and evaluate the success of prospective and future service providers?
- Vendor governance.
- Resourcing oversight versus partnership arrangements.
14.15-15.00 // FAR and beyond: uplifting risk, governance and communication with key stakeholders
Regulators are tightening the screws on executive, board, and trustee responsibilities through a series of prudential practice guides and regulatory requirements, including SPS 530, CPS 230 and the impending shift from BEAR to FAR.
This session will discuss best practice risk and governance frameworks, along with optimum ways to engage with senior business stakeholders, such as boards, trustees and regulators, in order to meet requests and provide education where necessary. It will consider:
- Framework design considerations.
- The impact of SPS 530 on investment governance frameworks: lessons learnt.
- Managing regulatory reporting and ad hoc requests.
- Board trustee communication: How to balance too much information with not enough information?
- Identifying and addressing knowledge gaps and educational needs.
15.00-15.30 // Refreshments and networking
15.30-16.00 // InfoSec: filling the gaps in cyber-security
Cyber security is a top priority for asset owners and asset managers alike, yet a recent study by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has highlighted significant control gaps among regulated entities.
This presentation will discuss best practice cyber security and controls, governance arrangements, and incident preparedness frameworks for asset owners and asset managers. It will consider:
- Trends and threats.
- Identifying and classifying critical and sensitive information assets.
- Assessing third party information security capabilities.
- Defining and executing control testing programs.
- Best practice incident response plans.
16.00-16.30 // Beyond the hype: practical opportunities for machine learning in investment management
This presentation will look beyond the hype and discuss practical use cases and governance considerations around the use of ‘AI’. It will consider:
- Regulatory compliance, controls and oversight – as a more efficient means to review key information such client reporting and fund factsheets.
- Communications: streamlining reporting, summarising information, finding better ways of describing problems / solutions, preparing content or helping edit written content etc.
- Enabling greater customer ‘guided’ self-service.
16.30-17.30 // Networking reception, drinks and canapés