2025 Fiduciary Investors Symposium NSW

Welcome remarks

Financial markets and domestic and foreign policy by nation states are increasingly interwoven, with governments intervening more frequently in the real economy and investors reacting to seemingly endless political change. This keynote briefing will cut through the news cycle noise to provide long-term investors with an assessment of the material geopolitical trends being reshaped by highly disruptive and unorthodox US Administration under Donald Trump’s second presidency. It will also provide an outlook on security in Europe and Ukraine, trade and territorial disputes with China and ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

This opening panel will hear from investment leaders about how they are building portfolio resilience and determining asset allocation in a climate of macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility. It will examine the implications of big secular trends and rising government intervention in the economy as well as questions around US exceptionalism and the world’s largest sharemarket. It will question capital assumptions and the outlook for inflation and monetary policy.
Includes table discussion

This session will present a thesis on the macroeconomic climate and outlook for inflation, outlining what institutional investors need to know about monetary and fiscal policy and whether increasing jitters about the US economy might spell a more sustained and problematic downturn.

This session will unpack the trajectory for institutional asset owner investments in green energy and renewable infrastructure, against a backdrop of declining corporate and government support for environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives in some jurisdictions.

This session will interrogate the vast exposure of Australian institutional portfolios to the US sharemarket. Are the capital assumptions underpinning US equities still accurate? Is there any meaningful alternative? It will also debate the prospects of the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks and investment opportunities and risks inartificial intelligence technology.

This interactive session will draw on the discipline of behavioural finance to help provide frameworks for institutional investors to make important decisions amid heightened stress and a climate of constant change and instability. It will opine on the latest academic research on optimal market design and retail and institutional investor behaviour.
Includes table discussion

Opening remarks

This session will place the current market conditions within a historical context, with insights from a seasoned US investor with four decades of lived experience across credit cycles. It will examine the changing interactions between public and private credit exposures in institutional portfolios and outline the “new rules for credit investors”.

This session will provide delegates with an update on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s work on domestic private and public markets and concerns around the opacity and risk profile of some unlisted asset investments. It will unpack the regulator’s recent discussion paper on private markets and the implications for local institutional investors.

This session will debate the merits of the trend towards increased exposure to private markets in institutional portfolios, with a focus on private credit. It will examine asset owner demand and proficiency, as well as overall hygiene of the booming market and emerging and diverse sub-sector opportunities.
Includes table discussion

This session examines the role of insurance-linked securities in diversified institutional portfolios, trends in the market including the development of emerging new securities, and how climate change is likely to affect ILS strategies as both the frequency and severity of natural disasters looks set to increase.

This panel will unpack the trend towards ‘tokenisation’ of financial assets on the blockchain and the efficiencies and challenges it creates for capital markets. It will examine the outlook for blockchain -based technologies under a sympathetic US government and place for cryptocurrency and digital assets exposure in institutional portfolio, along with a case study of AMP Super’s historic allocation to bitcoin.

This session will examine the outlook for investment in Asian markets across asset classes and against a backdrop of increasing volatility and concern about the US economy. It will question the investment thesis around regional giants China, Japan, alongside a string of ‘tiger economies’.
Includes table discussion

In this highlight session, one of Australia’s investment leaders will outline the sovereign wealth fund’s position on the geopolitical and macroeconomic climate and its portfolio implications, with a focus on currency and foreign exchange risk. It will also examine the fund’s unique “joined up” approach and investment strategy.

Opening remarks

In this interactive session, The Conexus Institute will extrapolate on major research project on systemic risk in the superannuation system, drawing out the implications for Chief Investment Officers and their teams. It will address some concerns around institutional investment exposures, while also myth-busting some of the narratives around risks of super to the economy.
Includes table discussion

This session will draw on the global readership of Top1000Funds.com, Investment Magazine’s sister publication, to showcase the strategy and thinking of a leading international peer in the institutional asset owner community. It will highlight how investors around the world are responding to a raft of congruent challenges, including rising regulation and geopolitical and market volatility.

The increasing prevalence of unlisted asset and private market exposures in institutional portfolios has triggered the emergence of new and unique senior roles within institutional asset owners across liquidity management, asset valuation and disclosure functions. This session will assess how investment organisations are responding to regulatory and market pressures and adapting management strategy to reflect portfolio shifts.

This session will investigate global approaches to managing and adapting portfolios operated by defined contribution schemes as members move into retirement phase. It will consider liquidity, asset allocation and organisational best practice to support decumulation.

The final session of the symposium will see investment leaders take sides in a formal Oxford Union-style debate on the motion “that mega-funds produce better investment outcomes for members”.

Closing remarks