Analysis

The move from Viridian and CFS to provide personal advice in a scaled manner highlights a growing willingness within the industry to fix its own problems in lieu of waiting for the government.

With traditional equity managers losing the fight against passive product providers, diversification into more specialist classes of asset management may provide a more sustainable path. But that’s a pricey endeavour, and easier said than done.

The benchmarks that are supposed to measure performance and create alignment with end investors are working against asset managers, and the industry must find new ways to demonstrate value before it’s too late, according to MFS.

A slowing economy has prompted S&P/ASX 200 companies to keep a lion’s share of their earnings by tightening shareholder distributions, with fund manager Martin Currie identifying the resources sector as a real cause for concern regarding future income.

While APRA’s proposed hybrid phase out is designed to improve the resilience of the financial system, it will inevitably impact investors and the strategic plans that some advisers have laid out. Navigating the transition will require forethought.

True diversification means owning assets that are truly uncorrelated. But that fact hasn’t stopped big investors from piling into the private markets while pretending that the Fed Put can protect their public portfolios.

Pessimists are still trying to shoehorn the “bubble” narrative into the private capital story, but an EY report highlights not only the rise of this burgeoning ‘alternative’ sector, but the reasons it’s likely to keep growing.

Why Powell went for a double-dip on the guide rate at the world’s most important reserve bank, sans the presence of a significant economic event that would typically predicate it, remains a mystery. What is clear, though, is the near-term direction of rates in US.

In the Dixon’s inquiry vertical integration will not only be writ large, but it will have thousands of victims’ names attached to it. The practice has run relatively unfettered for years, but that may be about to change.

Australia’s sovereign wealth fund’s prediction of a tough year for investors didn’t come to pass, but they’re not the only well-resourced manager that missed the mark. For investors, this period is a reminder that investment patterns may exist, but markets certainly aren’t beholden to them.

The environment we’re heading into is one where economies will have more redundancies built into them so they can withstand exogenous geopolitical shocks, according to Ausbil.

Knowing how much personality to inject into a professional advice veneer is a skill that needs to be learnt by all advisers, but practices also have a role to play in setting up the right systems, processes and cultural settings so that advisers are comfortable being their true self.