This week it’s been all go here at Vidett, where we could be found paying special attention towards the higher education (HE) sector. It’s an area where we have several experts in the field, including myself, our HE lead Mandy Kaur-Sadler, Mike Birch, Rich Ingham and Geoff Winn.
It was a particularly busy week for me, between presenting at the British Universities Finance Directors Group (BUFDG) Finance Festival on Monday alongside Mandy, to then attending the Pension and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) Investment Conference from Tuesday to Thursday.
Money Monday
Kicking off the week at BUFDG’s Finance Festival, we presented our thoughts and ideas on how to provide meaningful pension benefits to employees whilst managing costs and mitigating the volatility common in many pension arrangements provided by universities.
We were surprised to be the only pension slot in their 3-day event, but were delighted with how the session went, with our participation hopefully helping increase pensions awareness and start some real conversations on the topic.
In our increasingly digital world, it can be surreal presenting at these virtual conferences – mainly as you can’t really see the audience you’re talking to, but we received a few glowing comments – including some from the Isio and Mercer HE specialists in attendance – that gave us some confidence it went pretty well.
An early start
The next morning my alarm clock greeted me at 6:30am. Today we were climbing Arthur’s Seat with Mercer for their annual charity walk, as we looked to raise funds and awareness towards their chosen charity: Ambitious about Autism.
To the uninitiated, Arthur’s Seat is an ancient extinct volcano in Edinburgh, once described by Scottish novelist and author of Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson as “a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design”.
As you can see, the views were great and a welcome breath of fresh air before the PLSA conference started.
A right honourable Tuesday
My morning adventure was followed by a really insightful session on investing in university spin-out companies. It was a super positive talk on the possibilities in the UK to help create new “unicorns” ($1Bn companies) and “decacorns” (10x a unicorn in case the latin prefixes weren’t obvious).
The day even had a former party leader in attendance, in the shape of Lord William Hague. The former conservative party leader’s scary yet fascinating insights on geopolitics at least ended on a high, with him highlighting the HE sector as one of Britain’s best assets bringing new innovations all the time – perhaps a little bias coming from the Chancellor of Oxford University!
Whirlwind Wednesday
Toward the end of the week there were no HE specific themed sessions, but the sector overall was still well represented by speakers from the Universities Superannuation Scheme in sessions about investing more in productive assets and delivering good outcomes for pension scheme members – referencing the PLSA retirement living standards just as we did on Monday.
Typhoon Thursday
My conference week wrapped up at the Russell Investments stall, where I couldn’t resist checking out their AI photo booth. As a result, I now know what I’d look like as an action figure… your pension related HE-Man is in ongoing negotiations for production. At least I come away with a new LinkedIn picture!
A thought filled Friday
A huge thanks goes out to my hosts this week: Mercer, Goldman Sachs, and WTW for the challenge and reward of completing the charity walk; as well as the dinners, drinks, and enjoyable chats with both old and new contacts. I end the week reflecting on the super positive experiences and aiming for an early finish to get the weekend started!
For further information on any of the above, please contact Phil Williams from our Higher Education team.
