Kaizen Hosts Financial Services Leaders At Inaugural COO Luncheon

Kaizen Recruitment recently hosted the first of a series of luncheons of chief operating officers and senior operations professionals from Kaizen’s financial services community.

The meeting drew together representatives from a range of investment firms and service providers, with the aim of providing a networking forum for senior professionals, and an opportunity to share and examine common challenges.

Several themes emerged:

• The changing nature of the traditional retail distribution model and the impact of multiple factors including technology, increasing consumer focus, and innovation.

• Regulatory change and operational risk issues are a major burden for the operations community and firms have spent considerable time and resources responding to regulatory requirements in recent months.

• Noting that it is very early days for RG97, questions were raised as to how much value the disclosure of transactions costs will add? Whether disclosure outcomes may be more complicated for investors? And concern about potential impact on operational teams to provide RG97 information at the same time as managing critical end-of-year processes?

[Editor’s note: on the afternoon of this discussion ASIC announced it will conduct an external review on the effects of the Regulatory Guide 97 fee disclosure reforms]

• Investment firms are working through responses to operational due diligence reviews from registrable superannuation entities. All are working to make the process efficient and insightful, and keen to avoid conducting separate and similar, but slightly different, reviews with every client. A standardised approach may benefit investment firms and investors.

• Cyber security has climbed up the risk profile ladder and is a real, significant, and current threat. An example discussed was a serious cyber-attack which had catastrophic business consequences. Organisations are educating people and building awareness of hacker behaviour and what and how to protect themselves.

• A future topic may look at an emerging issue: the desire to respond to the needs of changing customers – given shifts in the use and availability of technology, whereas the reality is that it has become much more complicated for retail clients to directly access financial products.

Kaizen Recruitment thanks those chief operating officers and senior operations professionals who participated in the luncheon for their participation and their candour. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of any individual present.

Best regards

Matt McGilton – Kaizen Recruitment

Kaizen Recruitment specialises financial services recruitment across funds management, wealth management, superannuation, investment consulting and insurance. We are based in Melbourne and Sydney. For assistance or further information please telephone our office at +61 3 9095 7157 or submit an online form.

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