Portfolio.hu has been organizing professional meetings about wealth management since 2005. The conferences provide an opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience in the field of market processes, product development and distribution. The annual Portfolio.hu Wealth Management Conference has thus become one of the most important forums for not only wealth managers, but for their actual and potential partners and clients as well. Regular attendees of the event include investment fund managers, private bank professionals, experts from the insurance sphere, independent sales network managers and pension fund managers. Over the previous year, the burgeoning financial economic crisis has only increased our event's relevance. The stabilization of financial and capital markets that have recently undergone a historic correction has yet to come, and presents an enormous challenge for all those associated with the wealth management sphere.
The topic of the conference After years of plenty which brought significant wealth increases and substantial yields, wealth managers in nearly every segment must face a shrinking of the market and unusual challenges, whether they work in institutional wealth management, or portfolio handling and investment products for private clients. The unwritten rules of the financial market have temporarily been suspended, so without special know-how, it is more difficult than ever to achieve outstanding wealth management results.
In addition to investment decisions, the altered market environment has place product development in a new context, following the previous years' continued and widespread innovation, focus has now shifted towards retaining investors and creating products to match the different level of willingness to take risks, and special emphasis has been placed on handling the particular risks that have emerged in the system.
The difficult situation of the bank sector has also made the job of traditional sales channels more difficult, and the competition among replacement products has become palpably stronger, presenting even greater challenges for the distribution of wealth management products. Moreover, in the uncertain market situation, demand for reliably high quality products has increased among institutional clients, thus making independent quality assessments vital for sales, and among private clients, focusing attention on private banking services, traditionally based on trust.
Video of the Wealth Management 2008 Conference: (lakasportal.hu)
Focus topics of the conference:
• The wealth management market in a world gone topsy-turvy
• Challenges for product development in light of new needs, new benchmarks
• "From the factory to the consumer" - the role of distribution
• Classical private banking - what will become of it?
• Pension funds - what now?
• Independent quality assessment systems in wealth management service
• Professional wealth management techniques and institutional questions
The Event:
DATE: Thursday, June 11, 2009.
PLACE: Hotel Intercontinental, Budapest
(1052 Budapest, Apáczai Csere János u. 12-14.)
Hotel Information, Map & Location
Hot topics:
- Wealth management: Market and trends
- Product development, benchmarks
- Rating, investment quality
- Pension funds and investment funds
- Distribution
- Private banking
Target audience:
Our conference can give useful knowledge to
1. Private banks, private portfolio managing financial corporations
2. Fund managers
3. Independent financial advisors
4. Pension funds and other institutional investors
5. Institutions participating in investment products distribution
The Portfolio.hu conferences are highly renowned for their great opportunities of networking and building business relationships, merely not just giving new professional knowledge. Our aim is not to have a one time occasion event, but creating a yearly international interactive forum about the changes of the market.
Some Speakers’ sentences about topics:
"Open-ended real estate funds - a stable investment alternative in economic difficult times"
Enno Kühn Client Portfolio Management/Product Development, Credit Suisse Asset Management Immobilien KAG
"The process of due diligence is important as it assesses whether a Fund House has the internal resources and processes to effectively manage investor's funds. It attempts to identify those Asset Management companies and mutual funds which satisfy some prespecified standards of quality. Citi has an open architecture for the distribution of mutual funds and the process of due diligence plays a crucial role in indentifying those Fund Houses and funds that satisfy our internal requirements for the benefit of investors."
Nitin Ramdaursingh, Mutual Funds Analyst, Citibank (London)
"With increased focus on the need for investors to be better informed and to understand the products they are selecting, there is increasing demand for qualitative fund research to support the due diligence process. Guy Boden from Standard & Poor’s Fund Services will describe the process behind S&P’s qualitative fund management ratings and will also summarise a Cambridge University study commissioned by S&P examining the difference between rated funds and not rated funds on fund flows and performance."
Guy Boden, Head of Fund Research, Standard & Poor's Fund Services
"The evolution of global equity markets and institutional investment processes over the past few years and the severe market dislocation of 2008 are leading to increased demand for innovative tools to measure market performance and manage portfolio risk. In this talk, we examine some of the recent innovations in equity indices and risk models, including the introduction of Frontier Market indices, thematic and strategy indices, new generation risk models, and tools for extreme risk management."
Dimitris Melas, CFA, Executive Director & Head of Applied Research EMEA, MSCI Barra
"The crisis getting global in the second half of last year proved that passive asset management based on monitoring reference indices can, at best, produce results only slightly less worse than the market average. A case in point is the overall performance of the pension fund segment last year. This presentation aims to explain why diversification has grown to become one of today’s key asset management strategies, demonstrate how to prevent major drops and achieve outstanding asset management results in nose-diving global capital and money markets, and show how Generali Abszolút Hozam Származtatott Alap, an absolute return fund reporting a sevenfold increase in assets, achieved a return of around 20% in eleven months."
Zsolt Pillár, Investment Director, Member of the Board, Generali Fund Management
"The current crises hit hardly the pension savings, as well. Is it possible still to encourage people for long term savings? Why many regulation protect the pension savings?"
Mihály Erdős, Deputy Director General, Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority (PSZÁF)
"Think global - act local. We believe successful global investing requires a global presence combined with a local focus. The Fund brings investors access to the best ideas of our local asset managers. These managers are based in and focus on their regions. They have the autonomy to manage sub-portfolios comprised of stocks in their regions that have above-average growth potential."
Dr. Szabolcs Ercsey, Sales Manager, Franklin Templeton Investments Poland
"Probably Hungarian pension fund asset managment market closed its worst year in 2008. Previously negative rate of return was not typical at all in pension fund sector, furthermore in 2008 the size of loss was significant. The big question whether Hungarian financial culture can evaluate poor performance properly, or the loss can weaken the whole pension fund scheme and the importance of pension fund savings."
Attila Gaál, General Director, Aon Consulting and Pension Fund Services Closed Company Ltd.
"Legal environment has always had a significant influence on the development of investment fund markets, not only in Hungary, but in other European countries as well. In Hungary, the comprehensive amendment of the law in 2002 has introduced a variety of new fund types: fund of funds, protected and guaranteed funds, index tracker funds, special derivative (hedge) funds, and it also contributed to the development of real estate funds. These funds today already represent more than 40 % of the market. Nowadays there is a big need for re-shaping the legislation again. Today the key word is international competitiveness and better EU conformity , in order to help the domestic asset management market in its long term survival."
Andras Temmel, Secretary General, Association of Hungarian Investment Fund and Asset Management Companies (BAMOSZ)
"Independent rating of Hungarian money market, bondand equity funds is publicly available since November 2008. Though the difference between the performance of funds can be as high as 4%, and rating is a better predictor of future performance than past performance, the rating so far have not had effect on the market. The feedback of investors is clearly positive and the investment distribution channels are opening up, so spread of rating based fund investment is expected on the medium term in the Hungarian market as well."
Dr. Márton Radnai, CEO, Ramasoft Data Services and Technology Inc.
Additional Information:
Program - András SOMI, Analyst, tel.: 36-1/428-9062, e-mail: somi@portfolio.hu
Sponsorship - Balázs AGÓCS, Deputy-CEO/Sales, tel.: 36-1/327-4088, e-mail: agocs@portfolio.hu
Other information: conference@portfolio.hu
Some pictures about the Portfolio.hu Wealth Management 2009 Conference:
