Investors have come to the realisation that low expected returns are the new normal. This has led investment managers to expand their investment opportunity set and increase their allocation to alternative, often illiquid, assets that come with new challenges. This session considers these challenges and discusses various operational alpha strategies that funds use to stay competitive.

As Australian asset owners compete for the best investment opportunities domestically there is an increasing likelihood that they will experience gaps in their portfolio and too narrow a possibility set. Therefore, exploring international assets becomes an increasingly important for many funds now and in the future. This session explores the operational challenges inherent with transacting in multiple currencies, over different time zones and interacting with varied exchanges and platforms.

If change is constant then we should not expect regulation to remain the same. This session invites the regulators to provide insight on their intent and expectations for the industry, the challenges they have faced in introducing changes and the ultimate impact that they plan to make.

Data is more than an intangible asset. Data it is critical to improving investment decisions. This session explores how data is incorporated within funds and what is best practice in terms of data warehousing, governance and security.

Despite the heightened impact of technology and specifically automation, your staff will remain a critical component of an investment manager. This session will discuss the trends that are affecting investment operation careers and how to build the right ‘operations’ culture, the importance of diversity and up-skilling.

This session provides an update from the Australian Custodial Services Association on the organisational reinvigoration process over the past 12 months and their short and medium-term strategy. This session will also include the ASCA awards and our coveted lifetime achievement award.

The role of custodians has changed significantly. Custodians have been on a path of continuous evolution as they deal with a number of disruptive factors such as automation, cloud computing and cybersecurity. This session involves an update from the world of custody and how asset owners can get the most from their custodian.

This session will provide an update on the trends within operational due diligence. The session will also highlight the most important operational risk factors often overlooked today and importance of employing evaluations to ensure that risks are fully vetted.

There are many reasons your project could fail. This session takes a holistic view of past projects that have not turned out as expected and how pre-mortems can provide insight in to the challenges that could cause everything to fail.

There is a regular argument that Australia's future prosperity is at risk unless we take bold action and commit to long-term thinking, but what does that mean exactly? This closing session presents two scenarios that offer two vastly different visions of Australia, and what factors can help in achieving a country that we all want to live in.