Fund Boards Council

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 podcast

Against 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.

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")