The future landscape of the investment funds industry will be affected by external factors just as much as regulation, according to an exit poll of the 400-plus delegates attending last week’s Guernsey Funds Forum 2013 held in London.
The half-day conference and exhibition, titled Back to the Future, included two panel sessions – one on investor relationships and another on the effects of regulation – and a keynote debate featuring industry experts Nigel Vooght, PwC’s global financial services leader and head of its future-focused initiative Project Blue, and Better Capital founder and chairman Jon Moulton. The event was moderated for the fourth consecutive year by senior ITV News anchor, Alastair Stewart (pictured).
Using interactive voting for the first time, the forum opened by asking delegates whether they thought the future of the investment funds landscape would be impacted more by investor influence, regulation or external factors, such as new technology, demographics, social change, the rise of state-directed capitalism and mounting pressure on the world’s natural resources.
The greatest proportion of delegates chose regulation, with external factors in second, closely followed by investor influence. However, after several hours of debate, the post-event exit poll revealed that while there had been an increased proportion of delegates believing regulation would be the most significant factor impacting the future landscape of the investment funds industry, this was now matched by those voting for external factors, with investor influence a distant third.
Fiona Le Poidevin, chief executive of Guernsey Finance – the promotional agency for the island’s finance industry, says: “When we are pre-occupied with the demands of the day job, it is sometimes too easy to lose sight of the big picture. The Forum was about encouraging members of the asset management industry to take a critical look at their long-term strategies whilst remembering that these are heavily influenced not just by the immediate impacts of current regulation or changing investor demands but also that they will need to be flexible enough to cope with the changing external landscape. Macro factors such as new technology, demographics, social change and the war for natural resources will also impact the global funds industry in a significant way in the years to come and we need to be ready for that.”
