11 October 2021
Lizzie Waghorn provides an update.
On Thursday 16 September, the Finance and Investment Board came together virtually to kick off the first session of 2021/2022.
To start us off, we welcomed three new members to the Board – Sophie Wright, Peter Towers and Adeline Tan. Our new members bring a wealth of experience within F&I and support our desire to represent an international community with Peter being based in Ireland and Adeline based in Hong Kong.
This was also the first meeting with Clara Hughes as our Deputy Chair – congratulations to Clara for her appointment. Clara has been instrumental in driving forward our Diversity and Inclusion agenda and launching our LinkedIn page.
A key focus of the meeting was to discuss and agree our objectives and themes for the next 12 months. Over 2020/2021, we focused on sharing our F&I voice through the launch of our LinkedIn Group and through our ICAT blogs where we published a series of highly relevant and thought-provoking material. We also developed our strategy as a Board with respect to Diversity and Inclusion which is a theme set to continue and grow in importance throughout 2021/2022 and beyond.
Our strategic focus for 2021/2022 is an evolution of prior year objectives set to challenge us as a Board; these include:
- Continuing to increase our voice on key F&I issues of relevance to the actuarial and wider market
- Diversity and Inclusion and enacting on our strategy
Continuing to increase our voice on key F&I issues
As a Board, we want to continue our focus on sharing our F&I voice. Key areas of focus will include:
- Responsible Investing – bringing this to be front and centre of what we do on the Board. We believe we can make a difference to what our members and the companies that we influence can do in this space
- Institutional investing in a volatile environment – we have provided guidance to our members on avoiding the usual pitfalls in a volatile market but there is more to come – regulatory change is coming from Brexit and we want to ensure we participate in consultations, continue to advise our members in real time and pursue high quality research whilst being thought leaders in this space
To support this objective, we brainstormed potential webinar and blog topics. Ideas came through thick and fast covering a wide range of areas including: risk management in an evolving world, carbon accounting and reporting, biodiversity, natural capital, innovation of investments, digital currency…to name a few. Keep an eye out for F&I webinars and blogs on these topics and if you have any ideas on what you would like to be covered, please let us know.
Diversity and Inclusion
The F&I Board wants to be active thought leaders and game changers in this space, creating a voice and safe space for the discussion and to show tangible results by making firm but achievable commitments. We will be sharing our commitment and initiatives throughout the year so stay tuned.
We are up for the challenge we have set ourselves and look forward to updating the F&I community on our progress over the next 12 months. If you have not done so already, please join our LinkedIn page – here you will be able to keep up-to-date with topical articles and blogs, see information on upcoming events, discuss and share key topics and find out more about the F&I Board.
And if you’re new to this community and not sure whether Finance & Investment is for you – check out our career blogs aimed at giving an overview of the wide ranging roles across different types of employers in F&I.
Find out more about the F&I Practice area and its activities