Janice Sengupta is to pass some of her investment duties onto colleagues in Aon’s Retirement and Investment Solutions business.
The move follows her promotion to head of Aon Master Trust, while remaining the chief investment officer and director of the $2.9 billion super fund. Both Aon Master Trust and Retirement and Investment Solutions are part of the Aon Corporation.
Sengupta’s colleagues will be responsible for work such as quarterly monitoring of fund managers and writing the reports that go to the Aon Master Trust’s investment sub-committee. Sengupta said prior to these duties Retirement and Investment Solution may have been more focused on asset liability modelling.
“While I remain a member of the Aon Master Trust’s investment sub-committee, I have stepped down from a couple of investment committees for our financial planning practices in Australia and in Singapore due to conflicts of interest,” she said.
One of the fundamental changes Aon Hewitt sees coming in the next five to 10 years, in common with many others’ predictions, is there will be fairly moderate investment returns across all asset classes.
“Even for global equities whether you are looking at the MSCI or looking at different countries – the US , the eurozone, the UK, Australia – across the board what we are seeing single digit returns.”
For Sengupta while opportunities exist in developing markets equities, emerging market debt often provides a better option. She believes by being careful in the debt selection the credit risk can be managed and generate some attractive yields.
