FSC October News

By Sally Loane

How did it get to be November already? Like all of you, the FSC team and I have been hurtling towards the end of the year with no let-up in sight. We are all looking forward to the short break between Christmas and New Year when the FSC office will be closed.

We’ve covered a lot of ground and delivered some great outcomes and events lately and I want to share some of them with you.

Japan and Korea Delegation

In early October Carla Hoorweg, Allan Hansell and I led a delegation of ten senior financial services executives to Japan and Korea.

We were extremely fortunate to have Finance Minister Matthias Cormann join us for the entire delegation. It gave him a chance to hear directly from our members – and our fund manager peers in Japan and Korea – about the critical importance of having the Asia Region Funds Passport ready to go by January 1 next year, and of course to ensure the withholding tax issue is fixed.

We were privileged to engage in roundtables and hear from many excellent speakers over three days in Tokyo, including the President of the GPIF, Mr Norihiro Takahashi, at a unique briefing just for us at the Australian Embassy. Mr Takahashi manages funds of US$1.4 trillion, and gave us a detailed overview of the Japanese pension fund’s investment reallocation progress. We also enjoyed the hospitality of PwC in their new Tokyo offices, for a day of briefings on retail investor appetite and distribution opportunities.

On to Seoul, and Macquarie Group’s John Walker moderated a roundtable of Korean fund managers, many of whom were old friends who’d visited us in Sydney earlier in the year.

We are very grateful to Austrade and the Australian embassies in Japan and South Korea for their strong support and assistance. 

Read more here, Opportunities abroad in Asia

Carla Hoorweg and Sally Loane with delegates

Future Leaders Awards judging

In October we held the 2017 Future Leaders Award judging rounds where our competitors considered “What does the super of the future look like?”

While I can’t tell you who the winner is yet, I have to say I was extremely impressed by the calibre of our sector’s young leaders.

Congratulations to all the competitors for their blue-sky thinking and clever ideas. They all showed that they are the future of our industry and it’s in good hands.

Parliamentary Friends of Insurance

On 18 October the FSC, along with AIA’s Damien Mu and MLC Life Insurance’s David Hackett, launched the Parliamentary Friends of Insurance event in Canberra’s Parliament House.

For the weeks preceding the event, supporters Senator Deborah O’Neill, Terri Butler MP and Senator Dean Smith bravely signed up to wear FitBit devices and have their results announced on the night. Who do you think took the most steps and slept best? 

We look forward to working with our politicians to enhance the understanding of the life insurance industry and the great service it provides to millions of Australians.

Damien Mu of AIA and David Hackett of MLC Life Insurance

Breakfast with the Treasurer

On 30 October the Treasurer, the Hon Scott Morrison MP, addressed almost 300 members and guests at the FSC/BT Political Series breakfast.

The Treasurer’s address gave a broad overview of both the global and national economies, the growth in jobs, and the criticality of a strong, accountable and competitive financial services sector. He is particularly passionate about the opportunity for Australia to take the lead in FinTech.

After a torrid week in Federal politics, it was good to hear a relaxed Treasurer tell us “today is just another Monday!”

We greatly value the deep engagement we have with our senior politicians from both major parties through the BT Political Series breakfasts. My sincere thanks to Brad Cooper and his team for their support of this excellent series – and to our members for showing up in solid numbers.

You can hear the address on our podcast or read more about the event here.

Series partner Brad Cooper of BTFG, The Treasurer and Sally Loane