Events program 12ppnov13

For today’s discerning financial and investment professional

bigdebate

the

IFA Magazine’s highly successful series of Adviser Roadshows rumbles on

London: 14th November

Birmingham: 22nd November

Key Issues for the Financial Adviser in the New Environment

P Structured Products

More info at events@ifamagazine.com magazine

Contents 4

5

Agenda

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Four Investment Principles

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Networking Lunch

Structured Products Discussion

Beyond Active versus Passive

Investing in Asian Markets

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NOTES

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Adviser Issues - The Big Debate

Q&A Session

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Sponsors

IFA Magazine Events Ltd 45 High Street Charing Ashford Kent TN27 0HU Tel : 0117 908 9686 Mobile: 07974 708771 Alex.sullivan@ifamagazine.com www.ifamagazine.com

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Welcome THE BIG DEBATE

NOTES

KEY ISSUES FOR THE FINANCIAL ADVISER IN THE NEW ENVIRONMENT It takes a talent for understatement to describe the last three years as a challenging experience for advisers in the UK. As if RDR itself were not enough, we have had to cope with a new and slightly unfamiliar regulator; with a torrent of new rules on everything from SIPPs and unregulated securities to platforms; and with a steadily tightening tax environment. Not to mention the imminent abolition of trail, which threatens the traditional cashflow model for many advisers.

No wonder so many IFAs have been feeling the strain. Yet it is clear that the new situation provides vital new opportunities for those advisers who are willing to grasp them. And, more importantly, to share their experiences, and their grievances too.

Should advisers outsource? How do we cope with the growing burden of compliance? What can we do about unlimited-term liability?

That’s what we’re here for today. The IFA Magazine team are looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

M ik e

Michael Wilson, Editor IFA magazine

THE IFA MAGAZINE EVENTS TEAM Managing Director: Alex Sullivan Events Director: Richard Morris Editorial Director: Michael Wilson Marketing Executive: Malcolm Dunn

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Agenda 08:45 am : REGISTRATION and refreshments

All IFA Magazine seminars are free of charge and carry CPD accreditation. Correct at time of going to press.

09:10 am : INTRODUCTION and global financial overview from Brian Tora 09:45 am - STRUCTURED PRODUCTS : 11.15 pm : The Marmite Dichotomy Industry experts Christian Gardner and Thomas Hughes of StructuredProductReview.com explain the fundamentals of this embattled sector.

Man’s Best Friend Structured Products are the Staffordshire terriers of the investment world. Despite their intimidating reputation, many thousands of faithful, docile creatures exist only to serve and defend their owners’ interests. Michael Wilson, Ian Lowes and industry experts Gary Dale and Zak De Mariveles lead the debate.

11:30 am : INVESTMENT PRINCIPLES : Neil Cowell of Vanguard runs through Four timeless principles to help you reach your investment objectives

12:00 am : BEYOND ACTIVE vs PASSIVE : Passive funds have served us well during the recessionary years, but the new environment is producing opportunities for managed approaches. Leading experts from State Street and Artemis and Mike Mount of JM Finn consider issues such as core/satellite techniques, higher income equities and targeted ETFs. New Thinking on Active: Enhanced Active?

1:00 pm : LUNCH : Hosted by Alec Stewart, the most capped England cricketer of all time.

2:00 pm : INVESTING IN ASIA :

Fund managers from some of the leading Investment Trust companies will focus on specific Asian economies and share their insight. We will be looking at Japan, China and emerging markets.

3.15 pm 4.15 pm :

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End of Trail - who is being consulted, and what do Advisers want?

Long Term Liability. Is the present situation fair? What is being done?

Regulation and paperwork.

Q&A PANEL : A panel of industry experts, including representatives from the FCA, AIFA and the IFP, take your questions. Chaired by the IFA Centre’s Gillian Cardy.

BRIAN TORA Brian Tora, a Communications Associate with investment managers JM Finn & Co, is a well-known writer and broadcaster on financial topic and has served on the boards of both investment trusts and unit trust management companies.

After moving from Greig Middleton in 1999, where he was Marketing Director, he spent six years as Head of Intermediary Sales at Gerrard Investment Management.

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Structured Products – Man’s Best Friend?

CAPITAL SUITE, LONDON. SUTTON SUITE, BIRMINGHAM BELFRY 9.45 -11.15 Structured Products have come a long way since the late 1990s, when a small number of poorly developed and marketed products made the headlines by biting their unlucky owners. These days, however, tighter regulation both in Britain and in the wider European environment has bred the rogue dogs out of the gene pool and restored these remarkably useful and cost-effective animals to their natural place at their owners’ sides, protecting their assets.

That, at least, is the case in favour. Our speakers will be exploring the pros and cons of these ‘Marmite’ products (you either love them or you hate them), and explaining in detail how they work.

IAN LOWES Ian Lowes, Managing Director of Lowes Financial Management, has been in the industry since 1971 and is a regular contributor to the trade press. and was shortlisted in 2011 and 2012 for IFA Personality of the Year.

Ian was the driving force behind the UK’s leading structured product research service for IFAs, StructuredProductReview.com, which commands a database of structured products launched in the UK since 2000

GARY DALE Gary Dale is Head of Intermediary Sales for Investec Structured Products, part of Investec Corporate & Institutional Banking. He joined from Santander Global Banking and Markets, where he headed the intermediary distribution team and specialised in the development of structured investment solutions across the UK and offshore markets. Prior to Santander Group, Gary launched and distributed a range of investment and trust based products with a number of life offices both onshore and offshore.

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THOMAS HUGHES Thomas Hughes has worked in the structured product sector at Lowes since 2009, and he has played a principal role in developing the service to become the leading structured product research and information service for UK financial services professionals.

He has delivered educational presentations at the London Stock Exchange and various accredited Compliance and media events across the country.

ZAK DE MARIVELES Zak De Mariveles is Head of UK IFA Sales at Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking’s Global Markets business. He was previously MD, Head of UK IFA Sales, Markets and International Banking at RBS, where he oversaw significant growth of the UK business as RBS became a market leader.

Zak is the founder and current Chair of the UK Structured Products Association, and takes an active role in the development of the UK market.

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Four Investment Principles CAPITAL SUITE, LONDON. SUTTON SUITE, BIRMINGHAM BELFRY 11.30 -12.00 Neil Cowell, Head of UK Retail Sales at Vanguard, sets out four timeless principles to help you reach your investment objectives and avoid getting swept along with the mood of the moment – the economy, the gossip, the latest investment fads and so forth.

The point being, he says, that they aren’t just something that will benefit the adviser. If they’re used with your clients, to help them make decisions that give them a better opportunity to meet their investment goals, then they can help to communicate a common-sense investing philosophy that will set you apart from other advisers. That in turn can tie your value proposition to things you can control.

NEIL COWELL Neil Cowell is Head of Retail Sales at Vanguard, with responsibility for developing and increasing Vanguard’s growing UK distribution through IFAs, Wealth Managers and other key business partners.

Having joined Vanguard from Standard Life, where he was a member of the UK Distribution Board, he has broad experience of both the IFA sector and the Bank & Wealth Manager sector.

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Beyond Active Versus Passive CAPITAL SUITE, LONDON. SUTTON SUITE, BIRMINGHAM BELFRY 12.00 -13.00 Passive funds have served us well during the recessionary years, but the new and more bullish environment is producing new opportunities for managed approaches, at just the moment when such old favourites as bonds, bullion, cash deposits and absolute return funds have been disappointing risk-averse clients.

Of course, not all clients are ready - or indeed suitable - for a return to conventional equity risk. The task, instead, is to seek out middle ways that combine the best of both worlds. Our speakers will be exploring issues such as core/satellite techniques, higher income equities and targeted ETFs

MATT ARNOLD Matt Arnold is a Vice President of State Street Global Advisors and a Senior ETF Strategist within the SPDR ETF Strategy & Consulting Group. He develops research and strategy content for the global business of SPDR ETFs. Matt joined Vanguard in 2009 from Fortis Investments (previously ABN AMRO Asset Management), and before that at Dresdner RCM Global Investors in San Francisco, where he was Product Specialist for US small and mid cap equities.

LAWRENCE BRENNAN

MIKE MOUNT Mike Mount is Director, Intermediary Solutions for JM Finn & Co, which he joined in 2010 after moving from Barclays Wealth where he had run Long Only Portfolio Distribution, promoting Bespoke, Multi-manager and Index-based discretionary portfolios to HNW clients across the UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

A former officer in the Brigade of Gurkhas, posted mainly in Asia, he commanded an airborne reconnaissance unit for two years and also served on a operational tour with the UN in Abkhazia, Georgia.

ANA PAULA HARRIS

Lawrence Brennan is responsible for sales to Discretionary and Advisory Accounts in London, as well as Family Office relationships. He joined ABN Amro Asset Management, which later became Artemis, in September 2002.

Ana Paula Harris is a Vice President of State Street Global Advisors and a Portfolio Strategist in the Global Equity Beta Solutions Group. In this role, Ana acts as a key link between the passive equities investment team and SSgA’s clients and distribution teams.

Lawrence ran the Artemis sales support team for two years before taking on responsibility for discretionary, advisory and family office relationships in London in 2005.

Ana joined State Street Global Advisors in June 2013 from Russell Investments, where she researched in the active and passive equity management field.

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Networking Lunch CAPITAL SUITE, LONDON. SUTTON SUITE, BIRMINGHAM BELFRY 13.00 -14.00

ALEC STEWART OBE Alec Stewart OBE needs no introduction as far as sports fans are concerned. Britain’s most capped test cricketer of all time, with 133 Tests and 170 One Day Internationals under his belt, is a living legend. The century he scored in his 100th Test in 2000 confirmed his status as a national institution.

Alec is an enormously popular commentator on TV and radio.

But today, prepare for a hilarious series of after-dinner deliveries about his erstwhile colleagues and team-mates. Unmissable.

Alec will be answering questions, and he can usually be asked for an autograph.

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Investing in Asia CAPITAL SUITE, LONDON. SUTTON SUITE, BIRMINGHAM BELFRY 14.00 -15.00 It is fair to say that the downturn in Asian equity markets since 2011 has come as a bitter disappointment to those equity investors who pinned their hopes on the BRICs’ fundamental resilience. Stock markets have generally failed to correlate with the astounding levels of economic growth that are still going on throughout the region, and many of them have flatlined at best.

We can argue about whether this disconnect is due to a simple ‘catching-up’ after long periods of equity overvaluation, or whether there are more fundamental questions about the equity market/economic relationship in developing markets?

Either way, now that many Asian markets are showing signs of an upturn – some of the quite vigorously so – it has become timely to re-examine our assumptions. Our speakers will be exploring every avenue.

ANNABEL BRODIESMITH Annabel Brodie-Smith is Communications Director at the Association of Investment Companies (AIC). Her role focuses chiefly on communicating the uses and features of investment companies to the media, opinion formers advisers and private investors. She is a regular media commentator on investment issues, and she is leading the AIC’s response to RDR as well as running a training and information programme for advisers.

ANDREW LINDSAY Andrew Lindsay has been Director of Research at Witan since January 2012, having previously worked for the company as a consultant. His City career goes back to 1993, when he joined Fidelity Investments, becoming a Portfolio manager at Fidelity in 2000 and subsequently a member of the Asset Allocation Committee.

He is a non-executive director of International Shipowners Reinsurance SA and Russell House School Ltd.

Annabel sits on the Board of pfeg (the Personal Finance Education Group), a charity which aims to promote and facilitate the education of all UK school pupils about financial matters.

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Session 4: The Big Debate CAPITAL SUITE, LONDON. SUTTON SUITE, BIRMINGHAM BELFRY 15.15- 16.15 RDR hasn’t been the only thing on advisers’ minds this year. Longer term issues such as the imminent ending of trail commission and the continuing absence of a long stop on adviser liability have been creating cost and anxiety for ma ny. Not to mention the rising cost and difficulty of obtaining Professional Indemnity insurance, in the light of the above.

And all this at a time when advisers are grappling with a new regulator, the FCA, which has sometimes seemed rather Delphic in its pronouncements. Oh, and did we mention Arch Cru, UCIS and capital adequacy? The floor’s open. What do advisers want from the new situation, and how do we get it? Are you drowning in paperwork? And how is iut impacting on your business?

GILL CARDY Gill Cardy set up IFA Centre in 2011, proclaiming: ‘Independence matters to us because Independence matters to you’. She now heads up the UK’s only membership organisation focused exclusively on supporting Independent financial advisers.

Derek Bradley founded Panacea in February 2007 after seeing what he calls a widening gap between the quality of retail distribution service and resource support offered to DA firms when compared to networks and larger advisory firms.

The first woman to win Money Management’s Financial Planner of the Year Award, Gill is a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society and a Chartered Financial Planner, and represented the interests of IFA firms on the FSA’s Smaller Businesses Practitioner panel.

The Panacea Adviser portal, he says, empowers by providing free online access to the latest resources, tools, research, educational support, ideas, views and technical intelligence from product providers and support services. It is now a thriving web based community of some 18,000, with an extensive presence in the social media sector.

ALAN DICK Alan Dick, a partner at Forty Two Wealth Management, was elected as vice president of the Institute of Financial Planning in August 2012, and he is scheduled to take over as president in October 2014 Alan is one of a relatively few planners in the UK to hold both Certified Financial Planning and Chartered Financial Planning status. He is a regular contributor to the financial press, and as a speaker on investments and financial planning for conferences, radio and TV.

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DEREK BRADLEY

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PETER WELCH Peter Welch is responsible for the promotion and development of www.mytouchstone. co.uk, Equifax’s free-to-use Intermediary database.

Coming from Grainger PLC, where he was Head of Sales and Distribution, Peter declares himself to be passionate about helping financial advice firms run more efficiently, and about using data as a valuable additional tool. www.IFAmagazine.com

Sponsors MANY THANKS TO THE EVENT SPONSORS FOR THEIR SUPPORT

Structured Products

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