11th Fund Summit
30 October 2024
Amora Hotel Jamison Sydney
Agenda
09.00-09.10 // Welcome and conference opening
09.10-10.00 // Tomorrow’s client: planning for the industry’s next evolutionary phase
The effects of long-known demographic factors are beginning to present themselves in the industry, resulting in different investor/member profiles and requirements. This session will discuss how super funds and asset managers are positioning for the ‘silver tsunami’ and intergenerational wealth transfer from a product and service delivery perspective:
- Where are the opportunities? How can investment product providers meet evolving investor needs and what are the implications for business functions?
- Investor/member experience, efficiency and cost considerations.
- Understanding investor needs: the role for data and technology.
10.00-10.45 // Shifting gears: uplifting operational efficiency
Commercial pressures underline the importance of running a lean, efficient operating model. Technology also continues to emerge and evolve; however integrating solutions into broader operating models requires capabilities, guard rails and a level of flexibility not available currently for many.
This session will discuss how different firms are thinking about re-designing operating models and influencing wider technology and data to optimise functional delivery across the enterprise. It will discuss different case studies of firms’ system, data and enterprise-level transformations to lay the groundwork for future productivity:
- What tools, processes and operational capabilities are required to enhance resilience and agility?
- What functionalities have or will become obsolete and how can firms best manage the transition?
- Timing transformation: how and when to incorporate technologies?
10.45-11.15 // Refreshments and networking
11.15-12.00 // Consolidating service providers: evaluating the ‘one-stop-shop’ model
The focus on simplification and rationalisation is supporting the move towards fewer service providers, managed services, and front-to-back ‘one-stop-shop’ service offerings; where a key service provider becomes your main relationship, and partners with others in your ecosystem to deliver your services. This session will discuss the practicalities of process, system and service provider consolidation along with broader risk management considerations:
- What to consider when selecting and implementing a ‘one stop shop’ arrangement?
- Open architecture oversight: evaluating your service providers’ roadmaps and BCP plans.
- Interoperability: broader systemic and counterparty risk considerations.
- How do you keep costs under control and retain a sense of competition?
12.00-12.30 // Guarding against contagion: resilience in an interconnected system
In a complex, interconnected financial system, understanding and preparing for system risks and transmissions is an important part of risk management as evidenced by APRA’s financial system risk stress test, planned to commence in 2025.
This presentation will outline the importance of consideration of system wide risks and the approach of the system risk stress test as it pertains to APRA regulated entities:
- APRA’s focus on system wide risks and financial stability.
- The role of stress testing as an effective means to understanding vulnerabilities.
- Scenarios designed to explore risk transmissions and responses.
- Identifying spillovers and amplification risks between industries.
- International regulatory approaches to stress testing.
- Implications for the industry.
Chris Gower (Presenter)
Executive Director, Cross-Industry Insights Division,
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA)
12.30-13.30 // Lunch & networking
13.30-14.15 // Technology architecture: investment platforms in focus
As investment teams branch out into different asset classes, investment technology and operations teams are often left playing ‘catch up’. This session will discuss investment technology architecture and platform selection:
- All in one vs best of breed: are firms opting for one or two systems with some compromises and additional build, or are they opting for more systems with more specific features?
- What are the key selection criteria?
14.15-15.00 // Governing growth: keeping pace with change and growing AUM
Asset owners and managers are growing in size, expanding into asset classes and geographies and – in some cases – internalising previously outsourced investment functions. However, are operational capabilities keeping up with the change?
This session will discuss how investment managers that are subject to significant change are managing the operational implications, the challenges and lessons learnt:
- Faced with an increasingly complex investment landscape, how are asset owners and managers maintaining robust oversight of investment models and teams?
- Maintaining an investment operations framework that is appropriate to the size, business mix and complexity of business operations.
- Organisational culture, oversight and accountability.
15.00-15.30 // Refreshments and networking
15.30-16.00 // Managing your ‘critical data’
Quality data is an asset that can optimise processes, provide valuable insights, and identify commercial opportunities. Poorly managed data by contrast can increase errors, result in poor decisions and could even trigger regulatory action. Efficiently identifying and managing critical data is key to ensuring organisational resilience, but its application in practice remains a challenge for many investment firms.
As regulatory focus on data risk grows, this session will discuss best practice identification and oversight of critical data for investment managers. It will also discuss how firms can prioritise key areas, such as regulatory reporting and audit outcomes; and how to best demonstrate progress and adequacy of data risk management processes and procedures to regulators, auditors and other third parties.
16.00-16.45 // AI strategies in investment management
This session will discuss how investment firms are developing AI strategies to streamline processes and improve knowledge management across the enterprise:
- Key components of ‘AI strategies’
- What are the most suitable areas for AI in investment management and superannuation?
- What are the potential challenges and considerations?
- Successful case studies.
Sophie Thomas
Associate Director,
FactSet
16.45-18.00 // Networking reception, drinks and canapés