First version, October 2020
Update, March 2023
It has been a year since we last updated the guide to Women in Finance and it has been an eventful year for the investment industry. While the pandemic was still lingering, the focus for investment professionals started to shift towards rising inflation and the challenges this poses for resilience of portfolios over the long term.
Again, we’ve added numerous interviews with leading female investment practitioners to the [i3] Insights database, both in written and in podcast form. Among our favourites is the podcast interview with Tanya Branwhite, who reflected on her career and delves into TCorp’s current investment strategy.
The purpose of this guide is to shine a light on some of the leading female investment professionals and their achievements in the Asia-Pacific region. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but we hope to contribute to female inclusion by, not only highlighting the achievement of senior female executives, but also by inspiring a new generation of leaders.
After all, women join the finance profession in similar numbers to men, but they are under-represented in the senior ranks of companies.
As part of our commitment to increase the visibility of women and their contributions to the investment industry, we’ve created this guide, which complements our Women in Finance category in [i3] Insights.
Progress So Far
Although progress has been made in improving the rate of female participation in board roles over the years, we still have a long way to go when it comes to executive roles. This guide highlights the achievements of senior female investment professionals and we hope it inspires a new generation to follow in their footsteps.
In the past five years, several initiatives have been started around the world to encourage companies to hire more women to executive and board positions. And some progress has been made over this period.
The Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, United Kingdom, has been keeping tabs on the number of female directors at companies on the FTSE 100 Index for over two decades and publishes its findings every year in “The Female FTSE Board Report.”
According to the 2022 edition of the report, the number of female-held directorships among FTSE 100 companies increased from 23.5 per cent in 2015 to 39.6 per cent in 2022.
In Australia, a similar picture has emerged in recent years.
Whereas in 2015, women made up 20 per cent of ASX 200 boards, at the end of 2022 this percentage had increased to 35.7. Over the year, women comprised 45 per cent of new appointments to ASX 200 boards.
But the picture is much less rosy for the number of female executives in listed companies. The Cranfield University report shows that as of June 2022, women represented only 16.8 per cent of executives in FTSE 100 companies, which means there are only 36 women holding these roles, up from 31 women in 2021 or 13.7 per cent.
In Australia, research by Chief Executive Women shows there were 18 female Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of ASX 300 companies at the end of June 2022, and of the 28 CEO appointments last financial year, only four were women.
And whereas the glass ceiling is becoming thinner, women are now also facing a glass cliff: the phenomenon of women making it to the boardroom but finding themselves over-represented in precarious leadership positions, often being handed unsolvable problems.
This concept was first described by academics Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam from the University of Exeter in the UK. Their research showed women were indeed starting to secure seats at boardroom tables. But the problem was their positions were inherently unstable, causing them to resign or be dismissed.
So we are not yet where we should be.
But the investment industry itself has become more active on female participation at the higher levels in recent years. In October 2020, pension fund HESTA launched a new initiative, called 40:40 Vision, which aims to see women fill at least 40 per cent of executive roles in the ASX200 by 2030.
The initiative is a joint program that also includes fund managers Aberdeen Standard Investments, BlackRock Australia, Ellerston Capital, Fidelity International, First Sentier Investors, IFM Investors, Pendal Group and WaveStone Capital.
It also has the support of industry partners Chief Executive Women, the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, 30% Club and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.
Investors joining the initiative will commit to engaging with ASX 200 companies to encourage them to pledge to achieve 40 per cent women, 40 per cent men and 20 per cent any gender among C-suite roles by 2030 and to set clear and public targets towards this goal.
Female Leaders Spotlight
Although there are relatively few female Chief Investment Officers in Australia and New Zealand, we’ve been lucky enough to interview several of them over the years. We spoke to Sonya Sawtell-Rickson, CIO of HESTA, about the fund’s journey to insourcing asset management functions, while Coal LSL CIO and former State Super CIO Lisbeth Rasmussen sat down with us to tell us about her 30-plus-year career in investing.
More recently, we spoke with Wendy Norris, Deputy Chief Investment Officer – Change & Innovation at the Future Fund about the work the fund has done to reposition the portfolio for a world of higher inflation, increased volatility and lower returns.
There are even fewer female Chief Executive Officers, but we were inspired by our conversation with Jo Townsend, CEO of Funds SA. Townsend, who is also a former General Manager of Investments at super fund REST, discussed the need to boost resources and systems after a period of rapid growth for the fund. She also showed why insourcing asset management functions for Funds SA would not bring the same benefits as it has for some of the country’s largest pension funds.
But one of the most influential women in the Australian institutional investment industry is, without doubt, Fiona Trafford-Walker, one of the founders of asset consultant Frontier Advisors and adviser to some of the largest super funds in the country. Trafford-Walker sat down with us for a podcast interview to talk about her career and was as candid and insightful as ever, giving her views on the changing role of asset consultants, the underperformance of value-style investing and the old chestnut of style drift. After 25 years with the asset consultant, Trafford-Walker decided it was time for a change and is now concentrating on a portfolio of directorships.
Staying with Frontier, Kim Bowater, Director of Consulting at the asset consultant, spoke about some of challenges ahead for the industry, including the responsibilities that come with in-house investing and the impact of the Your Future, Your Super reforms.
Another asset consultant, JANA appointed last year its first female CEO: Georgina Dudley. Dudley has been with JANA for nearly 15 years and in this interview with [i3] Insights she shared some of her insights in how the role of asset consultants have changed over time and why they are still relevant in today’s environment of insourcing super funds.
Earlier that year, we also spoke with Dudley’s colleague Kirsten Temple, General Manager of Investment Strategy at JANA, about the challenges of Your Future, Your Super and the increased importance of sequencing risk.
More recently, we’ve also increased our coverage of family offices and institutional grade advisers to high-net worth individuals. We spoke to Sally Auld, CIO at JBWere, about fine-tuning the asset allocation during the midst of the global pandemic and the challenge of higher inflation.
We also looked outside of Australia and spoke to Serene Tan, Head of Investments for Sun Venture in Singapore about the importance of understanding the investment objectives and the role this plays in setting an asset allocation.
Innovation & Alternatives
We also looked at the more innovative approaches to portfolio construction, featuring Carrie Lo, portfolio manager with CalSTRS and lead developer of the fund’s risk mitigation strategy. Lo is trying to solve the problem of portfolio construction in a low-yield environment, seeking equity diversification through trend following, global macro and factor strategies.
Talking about factor strategies, Bev Durston, Managing Director of Edgehaven and a fount of knowledge on alternative assets, warned of the popularity of factor-based investment products and pointed to a number of issues, including spurious correlations and underperformance during regime changes. More recently, we sat down with Durston to discuss the opportunities in distressed debt, an area that usually does well towards the end of a financial crisis. She was some what careful about the scope of the opportunity this time.
As Susan Oh, Director, Risk Parity, Currency Hedging and Strategic Implementation at Pennsylvanian pension fund Public School Employees’ Retirement System, saw her non-United States equity portfolio take a plunge during the Global Financial Crisis, she wondered if there was a better way of doing things. Oh ended up taking a risk-parity approach and is slowly transforming the portfolio to reflect a more balanced risk profile.
One of the most pressing puzzles to be solved in the pension industry in Australia today is the development of adequate retirement products. Jacki Ellis, Portfolio Manager for Retirement Strategy with First State Super, spoke to us about the issues with creating a default product and the need for customisation. The comprehensive income products for retirement proposed by the government are meant to enshrine the minimum requirements for a retirement product in law, but where funds can create a sensible default option for the average 25-year-old, the individual circumstances in retirement can be so diverse that standardisation proves difficult in this phase of someone’s life.
Anne Fuchs is a veteran of the retirement space with a background in the advice industry. As such, Fuchs understands the importance of tailored solutions, especially where people are faced with challenges to fund their retirement. This is an issue that the retirement covenant seems to gloss over she says. While the covenant is an important step, it seems to focus on spending, thereby assuming the problem of retirement adequacy is solved. It is not.
Investment teams in insurance companies often have quite a unique set of requirements and targets compared to their superannuation peers. In an interview with Stephanie Weston, who is Head of Portfolio Design at HESTA and the former Investment Management Director for insurer Genworth Australia, she proposed the division of insurance portfolios into short, medium and long-term tranches, each with their own risk and return objectives. This helps insurance companies align their investment strategies with their liabilities.
We also spoke with Judith Smith, who has been one of the leading lights in the domestic private equity and venture capital industries. Smith, the former Head of Private Equity at Industry Funds Management and current Chair of LUCRF’s investment committee, discussed the development of the venture capital industry in Australia since the government introduced favourable taxation regulations for investments into start-up technology companies in the 1980s and the problems over the years with fund structures.
Alicia Gregory, Head of Private Equity at the Future Fund, explained to us what the recent strategic investment review of the fund and the increased appetite for risk means for her domain. Private equity is set to benefit from this review through higher allocations and Gregory put this in the context of the fund’s total portfolio approach and joined-up investment philosophy.
Sandra Bosela at Canadian pension fund OPTrust walked us through the challenges of private equity investing during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the fund has a preference for businesses that are not beholden to the economic cycle, but produce stable profits in any environment, the global pandemic provided a new challenge.
Former Head of Infrastructure at TCorp Lianne Buck took us through some of the highlights of establishing a real assets portfolio for the asset manager of the New South Wales state government, including co-investments with several of the fund’s Canandian peers. Buck also addressed the future of the airport industry under the global pandemic and the resilience of the individual assets.
On the property side, we find an interview with Mary Power, Principal Consultant with JANA. Power emphasised the importance of adaptability, which was only made more relevant by the recent global pandemic. As employees switched to working-from-home arrangements, property owners, especially in the office sector, had to think about how to deal with the new situation. Technology provided part of the solution, Power said.
This pre-COVID, two-part interview with Frontier’s Jennifer Johnstone-Kaiser delves into the firm’s property research program, how to identify investment opportunities and how changes in market trends can impact clients’ portfolios.
In today’s environment, innovation and sustainability are often intertwined, especially when it comes to investments around the energy transition. Canadian pension plan OPTrust decided to make this link explicit by creating the role of Managing Director of Sustainable Investing and Innovation and appointed Alison Loat to the role. We speak to Loat about narrowing down the opportunity set, rather than addressing all of the world’s problems at once.
Last year, we caught up with Loat to speak about OPTrusts new climate policy and the use of climate due diligence frameworks in the investment team.
Angelina Lai‘s interest for sustainable investing was inspired by a passion for diving. It only takes a few dives before you realise the full scale of the pollution problem, Lai says. She now applies this philosophy in her role as Head of Division – Asia Investment at wealth manager St. James’s Place.
Going Overseas
China has been both a challenge and an opportunity for institutional investors in Australia. It is a difficult market to fully understand and comes with a range of ESG issues, but China also offers an engine of growth unparalleled around the world. And as it gradually opens up its domestic market, voices call for dedicated mandates.
While in the past, many international and emerging market equity managers tended to underweight the country, this position is increasingly untenable, especially since the ‘Your Future, Your Super’ legislation pushes funds to hold China at benchmark weights.
Aware Super is among the select few super funds to have invested directly into China under a QFII licence. But in this interview, the fund’s portfolio manager of growth assets, Jo Cornwell explains that the current geopolitical tensions has caused Aware to take its foot off the accelerator.
Anna Weickart, Senior Portfolio Manager for Equities at Cbus, takes us through the journey this super fund has taken in taking a more granular approach to international equities, splitting out its emerging markets allocations. It hasn’t quite moved to dedicated China mandates yet, but it has certainly contemplated it.
New Zealand & the Pacific
Anne-Maree O’Connor, Head of Responsible Investment with New Zealand Super, explained how environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues impact on investments and how this area tries to quantify unaccounted-for costs. O’Connor also emphasised the importance of culture within an organisation and pointed out it is easy to dismiss the focus on culture as a fad, until something goes wrong.
Another New Zealand Super staffer, Del Hart, who is Head of External Investments and Partnerships for the fund, explained how the fund thinks about partnerships and how it has mapped the expertise of its fund managers with its internal research program. Hart showed how the fund has broken down the partnerships into three areas of focus: research support, secondments and fireside chats. She said sharing knowledge is the main aim, but in order to do this effectively, you need to be targeted in your approach.
Catherine Savage is one of the most respected chair persons in New Zealand. In this interview, we talk about her 12 year tenure on the board of New Zealand Super, and as such Savage knows a thing or two about governance. Governance is about creating value over the long term and to do that you need clear decision-making structures that are transparent, accountable and promote decisiveness.
Frustrated with the high fees charged by commercial private equity funds, especially compared to the returns they were delivering, as well as governance and performance challenges of poorly constructed direct businesses, Debbie Birch, a veteran of the private equity industry, set out to create a new model for Māori investors to co-invest alongside institutional investors in unlisted New Zealand companies. The resulting vehicle, Te Pūia Tāpapa, closed with almost double the capital initially sought to establish the fund.
Petra Suhren-Chan Tung, CIO of the Samoa National Provident Fund, explained the fund’s solution to costly personal loans on the island. The provident fund provides a range of loans to members, including housing, land and education loans, where members can borrow up to 50 per cent of their account balance.
Unfortunately, domestic violence permeates all levels of society and the investment industry is no exception. [i3] Insights had the honour to speak with Justina Sau only weeks before her untimely death. Sau, the founder CEO of the Unit Trust of Samoa, was an extraordinary business person and trailblazer for Samoan women, shattering glass ceilings wherever she went. A list of leading women would not be complete without remembering her.
Podcasts
Earlier in this guide, we mentioned our podcast interview with Fiona Trafford-Walker, but there have been many more interviews with inspirational women in the podcast series. Below is a selection of some of our favourite interviews.
Most recently, Tanya Branwhite of TCorp came to our office and we spoke about some of the earlier challenges in her career, especially when she ruffled a few feathers at Macquarie Group with her analysis during the GFC. But true to Macquarie’s meritocratic culture, the episode only cemented her reputation as a thorough researcher within the group. We also cover TCorp’s investment strategy and its approach to total portfolio management.
Sue Brake was previously the CIO of the Future Fund. We were able to sit down with Brake and have an in-depth discussion on the early days of the Future Fund in the light of the fund’s 15 year anniversary, how it got set during the GFC and how this influenced the portfolio as it stands today. We also spoke with Brake in a previous capacity at Willis Towers Watson and discussed governance, both the added value of good governance and also the costs of bad governance.
For a series on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, we spoke with Daniela Jaramillo, then of HESTA, and Nicole Brandford, who was at Cbus at the time. Recorded in early 2021, it started to become clear that decarbonisation was quickly rising to the top of the ESG agenda and the question how quickly to get there and whether to set interim targets was a key question.
A slightly different take on ESG is this interview with Renee Grogan, a member of the JANA Sustainability Advisory Council, where we spoke about ways to spot ESG trouble ahead of time through an analysis of company bottlenecks and raising questions around social licence.
A somewhat unusual topic was the interview with Caroline Cantor of Federated Hermes about biodiversity. Although at first glance this seems a somewhat niche topic, the effects of biodiversity loss are far-reaching and will have a profound impact on how the world operates if left unchecked. By the way, did you know the average person eats about a credit card worth of plastic a week through micro plastic pollution? Yuck!
Let’s not forget about Daniel Grioli’s podcast interview with US-based Denise Selden, who was Senior Portfolio Manager with Copper Rock Capital Partners, but has since retired. A veteran of the growth equity style of investing, Selden was one of the few women to work on Wall Street 60 years ago and found, at that time, women were not allowed on the floor of the stock exchange or even in the dining room. She talked about the sit-ins female finance professionals organised in order to change the status quo, but also about the dangers of the current identity politics. A truly impressive story.
New Interviews and Podcasts Highlighted Since Last Update
| Wendy Norris | Tanya Branwhite |
| Georgina Dudley | Renee Grogan |
| Kirsten Temple | Alison Loat |
| Sally Auld | Daniela Jaramillo |
| Serene Tan | Nicole Brandford |
To access all Women in Finance articles please click here.
Beyond the Panel Pledge
The Investment Innovation Institute [i3] supports the Panel Pledge and we work hard to ensure women are represented in all of our panel discussions and speaker line-ups. We will avoid panels consisting of only men or where the only female participant is the chair of the session.
We aim to extend the philosophy of the Panel Pledge to all of our activities and in addition to female participation in our forums, we also strive to increase the visibility of women by regularly featuring senior female investors in our publication, [i3] Insights, and on our website. We also aim for gender balance in our [i3] Podcast series.
In doing so, we hope to contribute to breaking the glass ceilings and overcoming the cliffs.
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[i3] Insights is the official educational bulletin of the Investment Innovation Institute [i3]. It covers major trends and innovations in institutional investing, providing independent and thought-provoking content about pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds across the globe.