MIX – Manager Ideas Exchange 2020

“There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.” This Lenin quote really hits the spot. We are living through extraordinary times. In these troubling times, we hope that you are all staying safe and healthy.

Despite this troubling backdrop, now more than ever there is a need for us to collectively help our mutual clients and support the institutional saving industry. While our short-term focus is necessarily the current turmoil and remaining client focused, we retain our key goal of identifying and creating interesting and innovative investment opportunities that will augment client portfolios and deliver against client needs. We value enormously the engagement and partnership from the asset management community in delivering against this pursuit.

As is typical, this 2020 Manager Ideas Exchange covers the following:

• A snapshot of key numbers relevant to our business in 2019
• Some developments in our research process
• Key research priorities for 2020
• A selection of thought leadership pieces that we thought you might find useful

Willis Towers Watson engagement model

Three main areas that have dominated our engagement with asset managers in 2019, namely sustainable investment, (organisation) culture, and inclusion and diversity. What constitutes best practice in these three areas has been rapidly evolving, and as a result, we have been engaging with asset managers not only to evaluate their current capabilities but also their plans and desired outcomes in the future and ways of achieving them. In particular, 2019 represented a watershed in the transition from sustainability being “important to some and peripheral to others”, to a key consideration in investment decision-making for a majority of asset owners, asset managers and investment consultants.

We are keen to maximise opportunities to exchange new ideas and use a variety of channels to share our thinking and gather thoughts from the investment industry.

We enjoy our partnership with asset management firms and are grateful for your efforts to help create great investment outcomes for our clients. We look forward to continuing this journey together and investing today for a more sustainable tomorrow.