Fund Boards Council: Recent Episodes
Fund Boards Council and expert panellists
Fund Boards Council is a specialist membership organisation set up to create insight and provide best practice thought leadership on corporate governance for mutual fund boards. We work with authorised fund managers and independent Non-Executive Directors (iNEDs) to help them navigate the complexities of fund board governance, providing opportunities to hear from and network with industry experts, not just from the UK asset management industry but from other major international mutual fund markets facing or who have faced similar challenges.
The FCA’s latest supervisory strategy and priorities for asset managers will feature in their 2023 Dear CEO letter to the industry, expected to be published in February.
This event provided a forum to discuss some of the key Responsible Investment questions facing Authorised Fund Managers (AFM), including the current responsibilities of both AFM board members and senior executives. Responsible investment is defined by the UNPRI as the strategy and practice of incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in investment decisions and active ownership.
The questions included:
- What role does the AFM play in deciding if and how RI is applied within the funds for which it is responsible?
- Do AFMs specifically monitor RI considerations today and if so, how do they do so?
- How can and should investment governance arrangements be evolved to incorporate RI / ESG into the purpose of the committees and what is monitored and how it is managed?
- Is applying RI just good investment management in terms of managing long term risks and seeking to optimise long term returns? Are trade-offs of short term increased risk or lower returns inevitable?
- When it comes to target market considerations, is it sensible for us to talk about customers who ‘choose’ RI investments, which suggests there are other customers who do not want RI investments?
- Where are the limits to the role of the AFM vs. the investment manager (especially as distributor) and are these roles and responsibilities different in a vertically integrated firm?
In this session, we spoke to leading fund governance practitioners – both board directors themselves and those involved in board evaluation – to examine the key attributes and characteristics of an effective fund board. In this highly practical session, the panel discussed the types of benchmarks and criteria that firms are using to determine the effectiveness of its fund board, explore the key areas that boards need to address in order to be considered ‘high performing’ and examine the warning signs that chairs and board directors should be looking out for. Attendees at this first FBC Board Effectiveness meeting will come away with practical considerations and steps to take back to their own boards.
This session forms part of Fund Boards Council’s brand-new series of events and content focused on the practical steps fund board directors can take to ensure both they personally and the board collectively are operating as effectively as possible. The FBC Board Effectiveness series will explore effective structure and composition of these boards, how to optimise the processes that support the running of the board and the behaviours of effective boards and the executive teams that surround them.
Ensuring the voice of the customer is heard effectively in the boardroom is not an easy task, particularly in a heavily-intermediated industry such as asset management. And yet, in the course of FBC’s Board Advisory work, we’ve been pleased to uncover many positive examples of how fund boards are endeavouring to put the customer at the heart of decision-making.
In this Digital Meeting, we looked at examples of good practice in this area and examined how the effective use of research, data and customer-centric processes are influencing the work of fund boards.
FBC’s Senior Adviser, Brandon Horwitz spoke with a panel of experts assembled for their knowledge and understanding of liquidity risk mitigation. As liquidity continues to be a hot topic for fund boards’ agendas this meeting took a deep dive into the role of liquidity risk oversight, with discussions of the following topics:
- Authorised funds’ management of liquidity risk across all asset classes
- The progress that firms have made with executing FCA’s expectations, as set out in their ‘Dear CEO’ letter to AFMs in November of 2019
- Best practices in the space of liquidity risk management for authorised funds
- AFM Boards oversight of effective liquidity risk, including the role of Liquidity Committees
- The respective roles in regard to managing liquidity risk between the AFM Board vs. the depositary vs. the investment manager
In this podcast, we looked at the evolving regulatory environment across Europe and the implications for effective governance for directors of London, Dublin and Luxembourg-based funds. We examined recent regulatory updates – in areas such as substance and accountability – and firms’ responses to them as well as discussing the implications for directors, particularly those with roles on boards in multiple jurisdictions.
In this Digital Meeting, we examined the interaction between fund boards and Management Company, Operating Company or PLC boards.
We explored what an effective working relationship looks like including areas such as effective and efficient delegation, conflicts of interest and the importance of culture.
This is a 15 minute excerpt of the Fund Boards Council podcast: Independence on European Fund Boards - Philip Warland in conversation with Denise Voss and Marc Saluzzi
If you're a member of FBC, you can access the full podcast recording in your Member Portal.
About this podcastGreg Brisk (Greg Brisk, Head of Governance and fund board chair at BNY Mellon) speaks about the role, recruitment and onboarding process for iNEDs and future opportunities for those looking for their first or next role on a fund board.
Greg brings over 20 years of fund management governance and board experience, and converses with FBC’s Shiv Taneja. Greg will reflect on his experience of hiring board iNEDs in the UK (and elsewhere) to BNY Mellon’s various fund boards, helping them get established in their roles and supporting them in enhancing the value and transparency of investment governance. The discussion also explores how the role of the fund board iNED is evolving and the implications for those aspiring to sit on a fund board.
Episode is Not Live
Publish: Nov. 05, 2020 @ 8AM Edit
Publish
Add a Transcript
Get episode better indexed by search engines.
Add Chapter Markers
Listeners can tap through & see what’s coming up.
Create a Visual SoundbiteBest way to share to social media for engagement.
Share Episode On
More Options
Email Link to Episode Copy
Direct Link to MP3 Copy Download MP3
Embed this ONE Episode
This is a 15 minute excerpt of the Fund Boards Council podcast: Assessment of Value: Survey of financial advisers, and Planning Year 2 reporting
If you're a member of FBC, you can access the full podcast recording in your Member Portal.
About this podcastWith over three quarters of U.K. investors using some form of financial intermediation, in an exclusive survey for FBC, the research consultancy Lang Cat surveyed UK financial advisers and intermediaries on their views of AoV reports, and the extent to which this new regulatory intervention is likely to be useful for their clients. And while this was the last FBC digital meeting for 2020, there’s no rest of fund managers and their boards as many are already starting to work on their Year 2 reports.
Following FBC’s year-long in-depth analysis of the industry’s first round of AoV reports and the intermediary market’s reaction to them, FBC’s Catherine Battershill and Shiv Taneja, Lang Cat’s Mike Barrett and consultant, actuary, iNED and FBC member Brandon Horwitz discussed what lessons has the first year yielded and what else should fund boards be considering for their reports in Year 2.
This is a 15 minute excerpt of the Fund Boards Council podcast: Independence on European Fund Boards - Philip Warland in conversation with Denise Voss and Marc Saluzzi
If you're a member of FBC, you can access the full podcast recording in your Member Portal.
About this podcast
In the first of FBC’s new Digital Insights series, Chair of FBC’s Advisory Committee, Philip Warland interviews two Luxembourg-based independent directors and governance experts, Denise Voss and Marc Saluzzi on the changing fund governance landscape in Europe and areas of convergence and divergence from the UK.
The interview, September 2020, comes at a time of greater regulatory scrutiny on board governance in the UK and Europe and in particular on value for money and costs and charges.
The panel examines what this means for those in the board rooms in London and Luxembourg and, in particular, what this means for the role of the independent director, how that’s evolving and whether directors sitting on boards in both jurisdictions might become more commonplace. They also look at the role of board directors in some of the biggest issues of the day such as ESG and how firms are embedding sustainability into their own businesses.
The podcast includes the following key areas of discussion:
- CSSF's attitude to board governance (at 2' 23")
- Changes in board culture in UK and Lux (at 17' 47")
- Direct interaction with the FCA (at 24' 52")
- Will AoV come to Europe? (at 26' 08")
- The role of fund boards in overseeing ESG (at 33' 38")
This is a 15 minute excerpt of the Fund Boards Council podcast: Independence on European Fund Boards - Philip Warland in conversation with Denise Voss and Marc Saluzzi
If you're a member of FBC, you can access the full podcast recording in your Member Portal.
About this podcastAgainst the backdrop of a growing focus by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on improving governance and value for money in both the mutual funds and pensions sectors, FBC was pleased to host a dedicated session for professionals working on or closely with fund boards, Independence Governance Committees (IGC), Master Trusts or Governance Advisory Arrangements (GAA). In this meeting, FBC bought together an expert panel of board executives and pension trustees to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities in enhancing overall investment governance and in particular examine each group's experience of measuring and articulating the value they bring to their customers.
In this session, we delved into the role of the board, in particular their independent members and related committees. We examined the resourcing and competencies required and specifically, what lessons we can take from the pensions’ industry’s Value for Money initiative and its mutual fund counterpart, Assessment of Value.
Joining co-hosts David Butcher, a member of Independent Governance Committee and Master Trust, Scottish Widows and FBC’s Catherine Battershill, were:
- JB Beckett, independent director on fund board at SVM Asset Management and member of the Investment Advisory Committee at Royal London
- Ian Costain, member of Independent Governance Committees at Hargreaves Lansdown and ReAssure.
In this podcast, FBC’s Catherine Battershill talks with seasoned governance professional, Philip Warland about the major fund governance themes that shaped 2020 and the outlook for the year ahead.
Philip discusses how fund board directors and the regulators are dealing with the continued COVID restrictions, the continued focus on value, not only in the UK but also more broadly across Europe and the converging governance themes across the regions which are impacting on the work of fund board directors.