L&G Talks Asset Management

2018 was a record year for pension scheme bulk annuity transactions, with nearly £25bn of deals, and this trend will have continued into 2019 too. According to a survey by AoN Hewitt, the time for schemes to reach their end‐game target is currently less than ten years.  Every pension scheme is different, so even if schemes are targeting the same solution, they will need their own bespoke action pl...

Whether we believe it or not, trust in the system is broken. Recent audit scandals have prompted reform and yet further reform is expected.    Having a robust audit committee is a pivotal aspect of improving the effectiveness and accuracy of auditing, and restoring trust. The audit committee has responsibility for the assurance framework for both financial and non-financial published numbers. As E...

Meeting fund managers to talk about new products or their performance takes up so much of fund researchers’ time. With so many managers to meet, researchers like James have developed a number of strategies to make help them and others in the industry get the most from these meetings as possible.   In this episode, we talk to James Calder and LGIM’s own Matthew Kemp about the City Asset Management...

It’s not often that you have to read full state constitutions as part of your role. But Brexit and the European political upheaval of recent years have transformed Hetal’s day-to-day work as an economist. LGIM’s foremost speaker on Brexit and European politics and economics, she has appeared on the BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC and more to filter the investment signals from the political noise.   In this e...

This is an extraordinary moment for investors. Many asset classes have notched up double-digit returns over 2019, with equities hovering close to record highs even as trillions of dollars of bonds offer negative yields. But even though markets appear to underappreciate certain key risks, there are still reasons for investors to be cheerful.     In our final episode of the year, we talk to Sonja, C...

In this special episode, Michelle Scrimgeour reflects on her career through asset management and her first five months as CEO of Legal & General Investment Management. From her time at Blackrock, M&G, Columbia Threadneedle and now LGIM, it’s clear that the City has not just become more international but also more inclusive “Culture is critical”, she says. “Joining LGIM was a different role...

With over $15 trillion in negative yielding bonds in the market, a decade of loose monetary policy has left developed market yields languishing and investors on the hunt for sources of higher return. Enter emerging market debt. At a market size of over $12 trillion, this can no longer be considered a niche asset class.    Cashflow matching strategies are customised investment solutions, designed t...

Governance is at the heart of what The Pensions Regulator (TPR) does because good governance means good outcomes for members. With a wealth of new statutory guidance coming into force, especially in such areas as ESG, Anthony has been instrumental in delivering education and support to help trustees find their way through this new regulatory landscape.     Joining us at our DB/DC Client Investment...

The world is facing a water crisis. If that sounds alarmist, consider a few statistics. The global per capita water supply has fallen by 56% since 1962, with 57% of aquifers having passed the tipping point. By 2025, 1.8 billion people are expected to be living in regions with absolute water scarcity and two-thirds of the world’s population will be living under water-stress conditions.   Population...

One the most engaging speakers at both LGIM’s Retail and DB/DC Client Conferences, Dr Paul Redmond is one of the foremost speakers on the subject of how different generations can work together most effectively. There has been so much written about millennials – what they want, what they don’t want, their expectations – that it can seem like this is really a generation that stands apart and sometim...

In an episode earlier this year, Howie Li and John Roe discussed what separates long-term investment themes from fads. As Howie explains, the enduring themes are those that are changing the foundations of how we live and work – from disruptive technology to the energy revolution and demographic shifts. Yet capturing these themes in an investment strategy is not easy, so in this episode Howie addre...

Live from the Landmark Hotel! We recorded this episode while at our DB/DC Client Conference where the topic of dealing with retirement anxiety was such a major topic. So that’s why we’re absolutely delighted to be joined by Julie Richards Group Director of Pensions of Boots Walgreens Alliance. The challenges of whether pension scheme members are prepared enough for retirement (“the cliff edge”) an...

What can Alex Ferguson’s career teach us about factor investing? In recent years, index and factor investing solutions have been bestsellers. But factor investing success is not a foregone conclusion, and there are plenty of quirks and misprints in the literature.  In his new book, Index Fund Management: A Practical Guide to Smart Beta, Factor Investing and Risk Premia, Fadi Zaher simplifies the w...

Many investors will still tell you that responsible investment approaches begin and end with negative screens – excluding whole sectors such as oil & gas from portfolios. This is entirely understandable: if an investor wants an ESG integrated portfolio, it seems strange to continue to hold oil stocks. But when you apply this to a market-cap index – such as the MSCI World with its whopping 5% e...

Many pension schemes store a huge amount of member data. But this is often difficult to access, incomplete or inconsistent, and stored in multiple formats – PDFs, spreadsheets and others. Schemes struggle to analyse their data, develop sample user personas, and make predictions about future trends and behaviours, let alone support members in improving their pension choices to improve outcomes. Our...

Advisers are no stranger to the PFS. With its royal charter to ‘secure and justify the confidence of the public’, this professional body is committed to helping its members develop their careers and maintain high standards through competence, integrity and care for the customer. Under the leadership of Keith Richards, the society has focused on three key pillars: (1) greater member engagement, (2)...

Unfortunately, and as much as we might like it to be the case, there is no miracle elixir for defined benefit schemes. Rather than hoping for magic, we’ve identified some tried and tested methods for making sure schemes run like well-oiled machine – mixed metaphors aside.  Studies have long shown that asset allocation is hugely important, typically accounting for the vast majority of the variation...

Her path from sports to asset management is a fascinating one – from her first job in Dublin, to London where international clients would mistake her for French because of her distinctly un-Irish name! After having been recruited into recruiting by a recruiter at asset manager M&G, she saw how this world is about connecting with talent and how do we as a company and an industry present ourselv...

E-commerce has changed the way we shop in a rapid space of time, growing at an annual average of 17% according to ONS calculations. But our demand for quick, reliable delivery has driven up the demand for logistics-capable properties closer to urban centres and this has reinvigorated the once ‘steady and dull’ industrial real assets sector. Prologis estimates that e-commerce logistics requires thr...

  The last decade has transformed the investment grade credit market. It’s not just that the size of the market has grown immensely, it’s that the average credit quality is much lower, meaning that risk of ‘fallen angel’ downgrades from investment grade to high yield rating is much higher. When the team stress-tested the investment grade market, the results were surprising: the number of expected...

  When contemplating what the final months of 2019 might have in store, we are probably similar to many other investors in feeling somewhat apprehensive, given the challenges we face: trade tensions, slowing growth, policy uncertainty and, of course, Brexit. Global growth has cooled over the last year and so the key question is whether the world economy has the underlying strength to prevent a num...

We’re promised so many different things that are going to ‘change the world’ – from ever-smarter smartphones to space tourism. And investing for the long term means that each of us in the market are trying to assess what are the most meaningful changes, the impact they might have on our portfolios and where the new investment opportunities might be. But a question we’re so often asked by allocator...

With an August bank holiday hitting the mid-thirties, it feels like summer is going out with a bang. That’s why we thought we’d record a summer special episode of our own while we’re joined by some incredibly talented work experience guests at Legal & General Investment Management. Following our episode on millenials and how they’re saving and investing, we took the opportunity to ask these me...

Christine Lagarde has a CV that makes many of us jealous: partner at the prestigious law firm Baker McKenzie by age 31, finance minister for France during the financial crisis, Chairman of the G20 in 2011 before becoming Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and most recently, nominated to the presidency of the European Central Bank.  In this episode, we’re discussing how investors...

We’ve unintentionally created a series in the past few months on the podcast. From the episode with Richard Romer-Lee which touched on the importance of communication with customers to the one with Helena Morrissey about how technology can help advisers reach more of the ‘uninvested’, these form a theme about how we as an industry are communicating with clients. This week we’re continuing that con...