FBC Insight – A Quarterly Newsletter for Investment Governance (September 2023)
The quarterly round up of fund governance insights and interviews direct to your inbox
Artificial Intelligence in Fund Board Governance
Many of us will recall the hype over recent years around new technologies such as blockchain/ distributed ledger technology (DLT) and more recently tokenisation, which were (and are still) expected to fundamentally change the fund management industry by reducing costs for investors, improving margins for managers and improving the security and scalability of operations.
FBC Digital Event: Consumer Duty – Fund Governance and the role of the CD Champion
At this first FBC meeting focusing on the specific implications of Consumer Duty on fund board governance and the role of Consumer Duty (CD) champion, Frank Johnson, the iNED chair of the First Sentier fund board and its CD champion, and FBC senior adviser Simon Hynes, were joined for the discussion by senior members of the FCA asset management supervision team with cross sector experience: Aiden McEvoy, Anu Upadhaya and Michelle Dodd.
Aldcroft on Asia Pac
Well, that was a different summer!
Baking hot in Southern Europe, the US, Canada and most of Asia, pouring with rain in the UK. Forest fires in Canada and Greece.
FBC iNED Remuneration Study now available to non-member firms
Governance professionals from across the asset management industry can now directly benchmark their firm’s compensation arrangements for independent directors (iNEDs) on the board of their Authorised Corporate Director (ACD) with those of their peers.
FBC Digital Meeting: Assessment of Value – FCA’s Multi-firm review
In an hour-long meeting on the 6th of September with 100 FBC members and a few invited guests, the FCA’s Garry Murdoch pointed to significant improvements in the AoV processes of the 14 firms in its second review, but argued there is still room for improvement in how firms’ undertook their value assessment
Profile interview – Phil Wagstaff, Fund Board Chair, Jupiter Asset Management
In a career spanning over three-and-a half decades, Phil Wagstaff’s iNED ‘portfolio’ career is getting off to a solid start, but make no mistake, Phil knows his way around a fund manager’s boardroom better than most.
Digging into the data: new FBC report examines key considerations for fund boards’ oversight of service providers
Service provider oversight is an important area of responsibility for fund boards, but one which competes for airtime in board meetings with a growing list of governance topics.
Viewpoint: Sheila Nicoll – EU Retail Investment Package
In the financial services regulatory world many of us are getting to grips with the reality of parallel universes. Post-Brexit, as we cross the Channel, we find ourselves having conversations and discussions which are, at least initially, strikingly similar but then go off in oddly different directions.
Harnessing AI to create efficiencies in the board minute process
FBC’s schedule of digital discussions for autumn 2023 kicked off with a Digital Workshop for company secretaries looking the opportunities and challenges of using Large Language Models (LLMs), a form of Generative AI, for producing board minutes.