Kurtosys Spotlight: FundForum Special

Hopefully attendees managed to stop by our stand and meet our Kurtosys representatives Mash Patel, Patrick McKenna, Paul Fawcett and Ray Aso for a chat – they all had an amazing experience in Copenhagen, and below are their own first-hand accounts of three event-filled days in the Danish Capital.

Mash Patel, Founder & CEO
FundForum 2019, set in the wonderful city of Copenhagen, served as an excellent venue for this marquee industry conference. We were fortunate at Kurtosys to have a stand set very nearby the main entrance to the Exhibitor area, which allowed us to showcase our technology and meet attendees throughout the three day event.

The conference was well attended and we managed to speak to many prospects, existing customers and partners, whilst also reacquainting ourselves with old industry friends. The fact that we had changed so much as a business and were able to communicate this to a big audience made the conference valuable for us both in terms of timing and amplification of our brand. All in all, it was well worth the investment from a time and money perspective. If I was in charge of the conference – and I recognise I’m not – I would make three key recommendations for next year:

1. There should be a dedicated stream to ‘digital transformation’ with facilities and equipment for tech companies to do live demos.
2. I would invite speakers from outside the industry, or even a celebrity or two, to make the event more attractive.
3. I would challenge the content of the main stage; whilst topics like ESG are highly “now”, I would encourage much more conversation about how the industry is now sitting in a very precarious position in terms of its own survival, and we deny this at our peril.  
   
   Paul Fawcett, Director of Sales

As it was our first FundForum conference, we had high expectations, but it delivered on its promise.

In a nutshell, the hall was filled with industry leaders in the asset management sector, alongside some very well-known faces that Kurtosys has engaged with over the years. As Women in Finance was a hot topic, April Rudin and Manuela Froehlich seemed everywhere all at once, and it was great to see them all on stage throughout the week.

There were some big names exhibiting: Blackrock on the growth of investing focus (with their new index business); Pinebridge had an amazing noodle bar which I frequented too many times; Manulife – thanks for the great water bottle take away!; Matthews Asia and RBC for powering the day with their exceptional baristas… and of course BNY Mellon with their smoothies and cocktails to end off the busy days!

There were also great conversations about the direction of the industry, discussed with the world’s largest management consultancies, who are ever present at events of this size – thank you EY, KPMG, Deloitte to name a few. We look forward to working with you to shape the digital transformation that this industry so badly needs.

Some new faces and startups in the blockchain space were quite the talk of the town; we had interesting conversations with Brickblock – real estate funds on the blockchain.
We are already looking forward to 2020 – watch this space!

Ray Aso, Associate Sales Director
I’ve been to quite a lot of conferences, especially in the last 18 months, across the industry, but my first experience at FundForum was refreshingly rich in its content and atmosphere. We all anticipated it to be a busy week ahead, but we were practically sweating from walking around so much and talking to so many amazing people (and most likely compounded with only some aircon!) Nevertheless, it was great to bump into familiar faces and meet so many new ones to hear what they are working on now, and in the future.

As the rookie of the team, I enjoyed sticking around the main conference area to talk to people, and unfortunately didn’t find time to go to a few more talks and discussions. However, those I did go to had some interesting takes on the trends that we are now seeing across areas of innovation and technology, as well as the rise in the widely popular contribution of ESG in global markets, and hearing about the recent launches of new ETFs. It’s always difficult to build such strong rapport with people over the phone, so events like this are always critical in beginning such relationships, and I personally have found some interesting people to continue sharing ideas with. I’m certainly already excited to return to FundForum next year.

ETFs & ESGs

In keeping with digital developments, this year’s FundForum has also lent much of its time to addressing the popularity of ETFs as low-cost portfolio building alternatives, investing in niche companies and industries, and ESGs, particularly considering growing concerns about environmental issues. The hype surrounding these particular investments is obvious in this update, acknowledging the conference’s move to give over its final day to the ESG movement, as well as ETFs having its own full-day pre-event summit showcase.

There’s been a whole swathe of information about ETFs and ESGs from FundForum’s YouTube channel, featuring video interviews with three experts in the field by correspondent Emma Walden.

Bryon Lake, Managing Director, Head of ETFs at J.P. Morgan Asset Management looks specifically into the ETF market in Europe and the US as part of the conference’s first ever ETFs summit, with Europe’s more “fragmented” market as opposed to the States’ “cohesive network”.

Susanne Bolin Gärtner, Head of Fund Selection at Folksam, talks about the growing global trend of investment managers succeeding with their ESG strategies, the growing understanding on the topic and improving sustainability across portfolios.

And finally, if you’ve ever wondered if there’s a link between these two acronym-based strategies, Investment Manager and Head of ESG Research at digital wealth management service Nutmeg James McManus explains their “synergy”, the growing positive reputation of ETFs and the importance of having its own summit day at one of the globe’s largest investment conferences.

For those more inclined to have a thorough deep-dive into ESGs, with evidence from the special summit day on Monday, Senior Writer at Formative Alex Thornton discusses some of the common themes that the ESG speakers on the 24^th brought up in relation to what defines ESG, forms of assessing the quality of data, millennial investing and the future of smart cities in this excellent written roundup.

Social Snippets

Finally, we have a few select posts to display the fun times we hope that all the attendees had at FundForum 2019. Firstly, our own roving Kurtosys representatives at our fantastic stall handing out goodies and meeting great people, including April Rudin!

As well as this snippet of Wednesday’s after party, with attendees able to let their hair down after a busy couple of days.

Who ever said finance geeks were boring? #Copenhagen #FundForum#l pic.twitter.com/HNxWkVNoA6

— Sara Sjölin (@sarasjolin) June 26, 2019

We hope you all enjoyed the invaluable insights that this year’s FundForum had to offer to take into the year ahead. See you next year, Copenhagen!