1 st Annual Pension Funds & Alternative INTERCONTINENTAL RESORT BALACLAVA, MAURITIUS. ORGANISED BY EXHIBITOR

Transcription

1 ORGANISED BY 1 st Annual Pension Funds & Alternative Investments Africa Conference MARCH 2017 INTERCONTINENTAL RESORT BALACLAVA, MAURITIUS ASSOCIATE SPONSORS EXHIBITOR ENDORSED BY Official Airline FINANCIAL SERVICES PROMOTION AGENCY M A U R I T I U S

2 contents Statement from the Organizing Committee 03 Atmosphere in pictures 04 Piafrica 2017 in numbers 05 Speakers 06 Programme 07 Piafrica 2017 Report 08 Testimonials 11 Press coverage 12 Acknowledgments 13 02

3 STATEMENT Statement from AME Trade The launch of the 1 st Pension Funds and Alternative Investments Africa Conference held in Mauritius attracted 166 attendees, 34 speakers and 13 media representatives, from 15 different countries and has been deemed a success. After 2 days of highly interactive panel discussions and networking sessions, some of the key outcomes included: Collaboration was mentioned repeatedly between various stakeholders, this needs to be encouraged going forward Education/Capacity building for trustees/custodians: it is important that the trustees/ custodians attend this forum to better understand and engage with other stakeholders Pensions regulatory: a number of issues were highlighted: Cross border co-investment Other asset class allocation, other than fixed income Collaboration with other pension funds Private equity as an asset class: conversations and progress is beginning to happen across the board, there is an imbalance of non-african pension funds investing in African private equity funds. It is important that African Pension funds start to engage more with this asset class. Africa pension funds and insurance funds represent a game changing opportunity if correctly deployed and managed in the infrastructure space. Industry needs to prepare better products for pension funds that take into account risk profile and developmental dynamics of Africa No event can be done without support from industry expertise and stakeholders, and for this reason we would like to thank our sponsors, RisCura and ARM-Harith, our partners, FSPA, EAVCA, Africa House, ASEA, Air Mauritius, our media partners, and all attendees who contributed in their own capacity to make the First Pension Funds and Alternative Investment Conference possible. The dates for the 2 nd edition of Pension Funds and Alternative Investments Africa conference have been set for the April We look forward to welcoming you back to Mauritius where we will continue the dialogue on what African Pension Funds can accomplish. On behalf of AME Trade and the PIAFRICA team Emma Sayers Senior Conference Producer 03

4 EVENT IN PICTURES 04

5 numbers Piafrica 2017 in numbers 166 Attendees 34 speakers 13 media partners 2 sponsors BOTSWANA CAMEROON GERMANY GHANA KENYA MAURITIUS MOZAMBIQUE NAMIBIA NIGERIA SOUTH AFRICA UAE UK Morocco Luxemburg Swaziland 15 countries represented 05

6 SPEAKERS Tom Minney African Growth Partners Ltd Bernard Yen Managing Director, Aon Hewitt Dr Ini Urua Vice President East and Southern Africa, AFC Thapelo Tsheole Executive Committee Member, African Securities Exchanges Association (ASEA) and Chief Executive Officer, Botswana Stock Exchange Harvesh Seegolam Chief Executive, Financial Services Promotion Agency, Mauritius Faraz Rojid Financial Services Promotion Agency, Mauritius David Ashiagbor Coordinator, Making Finance Work for Africa, AfDB Hayford Amankwah Investment Analyst, National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), Ghana Grace E Usoro General Manager, State Operations National Pension Commission of Nigeria Abhimanyu Yadav PRM, CFA, Head of Fixed Income and Currencies, MCB Capital Markets Richard Li Head of Actuarial and Insurance Services Corporate, Rogers Capital Richard Arlove CEO, Abax Services Mauritius Opuiyo Oforiokuma Managing Director/CEO, ARM-Harith Infrastructure Investment Ltd Muhammad Uteem Founder and Head, Uteem Chambers Richard Akwei Executive Director, Musa Group Gerald Gondo Executive: Business Development, RisCura Africa Bryce Fort Managing Director and Founding Partner, Emerging Capital Partners Gosego January CEO, Debswana Pension Fund Yann Robbiola Chief Executive Officer, LS Advisors Ltd Eric Fajemisin Chief Executive, Stanbic IBTC Pension Managers Doug Lacey Partner, Leapfrog Investments Bronwyn Corbett Chief Executive Officer, Mara Delta Sibusiso Luthuli CEO and Principal Officer, Eskom Pension & Provident Fund Bernard Tetteh- Dumanya Chief Executive Officer, SGL Royal Kapita Sunil Benimadhu Chief Executive, The Stock Exchange of Mauritius Hari Chaitanya Head of Investor Services Product Management, Transactional Product & Services, Standard Bank Prasheen Singh Director and Senior Consultant, RisCura Ryno Byleveldt Business Analyst, EIB Hugh Stacey Executive Director Investor Solutions, Augentius (Uk) Ltd Krishen Sukdev Chief Executive Officer, Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA), South Africa Simon Wafubwa Managing Director, Enwealth Financial Services Michael Dabrowski Head of Fiduciary and Corporate Services - Mauritius, Maitland Group Rajan Rosick Director Trident Trust 06

7 PROGRAMME Tuesday 14 th March :00 17:00 Conference Registration Wednesday 15 th March :00 Registration and Welcome Coffee 08:50 All guests to be seated for official opening ceremony 09:00 Official Conference Opening MC: Tom Minney African Growth Partners Ltd Welcome Remarks: Mahad Ahmed Founder and Managing Director, AME Trade Harvesh Seegolam Chief Executive, Financial Services Promotion Agency, Mauritius Gerald Gondo Executive Business Development, RisCura Africa Opuiyo Oforiokuma Managing Director/CEO, ARM-Harith Infrastructure Investment Ltd ASEA presentation: Thapelo Tsheole, Executive Committee Member, African Securities Exchanges Association (ASEA) and Chief Executive Officer, Botswana Stock Exchange Official Keynote Address: Harvesh Seegolam Chief Executive, Financial Services Promotion Agency, Mauritius on behalf of the Honourable Dharmendar Sesungkur, Minister of Financial Services, Good Governance and Institutional Reforms, Republic of Mauritius 09:40 10:00 Mauritius A premier investment destination 10:00 11:00 Session 1 - Key trends, challenges and opportunities for Africa s pension funds Africa s pension funds are growing at a rapid pace. Regulations and investment strategies are changing and the need for capacity and skill training is growing. During this session, industry leaders will set the scene of the current pension fund industry on the continent and discuss the complexities of the investment market, including cross border investments into African markets, risks and opportunities and how to develop sustainability and competitive positioning. 11:00 Coffee Break 11:30 12:30 Session 2 - Insurance, mutual and social security funds Other long-term funds are starting to make their presence felt as savings increase in Africa, including life insurance, endowment funds and open and closed-ended retail and collective investment schemes. There is a growing asset management industry as established and new asset managers register and take on funds. The session reviews key growth areas and how other funds synergize with the pension funds. 12:30 Lunch 13:30 14:30 Session 3 - Best practices for sustainable growth and regulatory trends Making long-term investment decisions for sustainable growth has an impact on fund participants and global economy. Key players will discuss best practices and regulatory frameworks both locally and internationally. 14:30 Coffee Break 15:00 16:00 Session 4 - Private Equity and pensions Private equity funds have been dominating the flow of investment and the rewards of Africa s growth story as they are uniquely structured to drive growth and transform businesses. African pension funds are estimated to have invested some $3.8bn - $5.7bn in private equity and have the scope to invest another $29bn. 16:00 17:15 Speed Networking Session for all attendees Bring lots of business cards and take the time to join our interactive speed networking session to meet and greet delegates and speakers attending the event. 18:00 19:30 Cocktail Function Thursday 16 th March :00 10:00 Session 6 - African pension funds This focused session will showcase some of Africa s pension funds and their investment to date. 10:00 11:30 Session 7 - Long-term benefits of investing in infrastructure, real estate and other alternative assets Pension funds have the potential to close the infrastructure gap in Africa but work needs to be done to increase the supply of investable projects and to increase capacity of pension funds to invest in projects directly or through infrastructure fund managers. 11:30 Coffee Break 12:00-13:30 Session 8 - Trends in African funds and impact on the development of capital markets Africa s pension and other funds industries are crossing the threshold into a major growth path and impact on economies, savings and investment. Find out more during this session. 13:30 Lunch break 14:30 15:45 Session 9 - Technology, fund administration and member services Technology, innovation and process change is needed for effective governance and risk management and is becoming a key driver for investment decisions. What needs to be implemented to improve the way funds perform? 16:00 Closing remarks 07

8 report POST CONFERENCE REPORT The growth rate in pension funds will have an economic impact on the whole continent, especially concerning investments, which is one of the main reasons for the keen interest to boost these funds at the Pension Funds and Alternative Investments Africa Conference. The launch edition was a success, effectively focusing on its major objectives. Both speakers and the attendees showed active participation in all the sessions. The event offered networking opportunities to the attendees. The conference was not only a worthwhile experience for its participant but has also been the beginning of promising networks and partnership in the African region. Overview of Opening Ceremony Mahad Ahmed, Founder and managing director of the AME Trade introduced the event by stipulating how pension funds are powerful investments and how Africa represents a significant opportunity. Sharing and interaction between the key stakeholders of the region via this conference is of utmost importance. Harvesh Seegoolam, the Chief Executive from the Financial Services Promotion Agency (FSPA) of Mauritius give an introduction of Mauritius and the Mauritius International Financial Centre on behalf of the Honourable Dharmendar Sesungkur, the Minister of Financial Services, Good Governance and Institutional Reforms, who sincerely apologised for not being able to attend the conference. Harvesh explained how the role of the pension industry is critical towards maintaining and sustaining our societies for stable financial services and investment of pension savings. Pension funds have for a long time been successful in managing people s hard-earned money and investments, and today the role of pension funds is accentuated by the fast-changing dynamics and pension funds and alternative investments are going global. He moved on to show how Mauritius has been remarkable at the level of pension funds and alternative investments. The Mauritius International Financial Centre (Mauritius IFC) provides the ideal environment to manage the funds entrusted to experts in the pension fund and the alternative investment fields. Mauritius IFC is a crucial turning point to the transformation of investment across Africa, notably in facilitating cross-border investments. With more than three decades of experience in the field of crossborder financing and investment, Mauritius has established itself as a proven jurisdiction which complies with the best international norms and practices and has already introduced a series of substance based rules. Mauritius, having a well-defined regulatory and institutional framework, offers a business-friendly environment and enjoys political, social and economic stability. Mauritius is an active member of major trading blocks across Africa such as the African union, the SADC and COMESA and certainly forms part of Africa. 08

9 report Thapelo Tsheole, Executive committee Member, African Securities Exchanges Association (ASEA) and Chief Executive Officer, Botswana Stock Exchange, saw the event as a great opportunity to speak to a large crowd and congratulated the organisers to have managed to pull such a large crowd from various African countries. He stipulated that this event seeks to provide a comprehensive view of pension fund in Africa and the potential for African capital market to drive economic growth and demonstrates the need for participants from all over the world especially Africa to converge on a platform like this to build capacity by exchanging ideas, expertise, best practices and how to optimally position Africa to benefit from future issues within the pension fund industry. Moreover, conferences like these bring a lot of networking opportunities which is a very a good survival tool for present way of doing business. Thapelo introduced his speech by presenting facts and figures to show that emerging markets like Africa are expected to have faster growth rates than developed markets in a near future and this implies that there will be potentially a new pool of assets to exploit by pension funds insurance companies. The pressing concern here is how the African economies can position themselves to optimise growth opportunities presented by this rise of institutional funds. Africa has experienced tremendous growth in pension fund industry over the recent years and his view is that much of the growth has been attributed to a shift from Defined Benefit (DB) plans to Defined Contribution (DC) plans. But despite the growth accumulated over the years, he states that African pension fund have been less successful at deploying their capital. He also stressed the importance of trustees to exercise due care and diligence, and upskill themselves, and that pension funds and the other investment institution need to build, develop and enhance capacity in order to comprehend productive allocation of funds and to adequately empower and take investment decisions that are in the best interest of their members. He laid emphasis on how such conferences or gatherings are important for the upskilling and sharing of ideas to benefit the pension fund administrators and trustees of Africa. He summarised some of recent trends that he feels should be taken into account as important considerations when looking into the problem of pension funds in Africa: 1. Traditional active management will continue to be the core of asset management industry but alternative investments and passive investments such as exchange trading funds are expected to grow at a rapid pace, the key reason being cost consideration, diversification as well as edging against currencies especially currencies of emerging markets and frontier markets. 2. African pension funds will continue to experience rapid growth rates particularly due to the dividend demographic of Africa s growing middle class, its increased use of technology and its rapid urbanisation. 3. Technology shall become critical for driving customer engagement, data analytics, operational efficiencies and regulatory body. Over and above operational risk, market risk and performance risk, cyber crime will also become one of the key risks for the pension fund industry. 09

10 report 4. Transparency and compliance will have an important bearing on the core structure and this will become increasingly critical in aligning manager interests to those of the beneficiaries. Regulation comes at a risk to the pension industry and ultimately to the beneficiaries of the pension funds but it is the same regulation that aims to protect the very same people that it is eating the cake with. There is going to be a critical need in forms of how pension fund industry is innovative enough to increase the asset base in order to outpace increasing cost of regulation. 5. Innovation must be at the key forefront especially with respect to relevant investment instrument that speak to African economies. A lot of investments that we tend to invest in are instruments that we just copy from developed markets. Majority of our economies are not innovative enough to come up or formulate instruments that speak to the African economies. Mauritius as a premier international Financial centre Faraz Rojid, Asst. Manager at Financial Services Promotion Agency (FSPA), offered a two-fold presentation on Mauritius as an international centre financial centre. In the first part of his presentation, he talked about the generalities Mauritius with respect to international finances and provided some background history on the subject. In the second part, he delivered a bit more information that was more focused towards funds and alternative investments. He asserted that Mauritius as an International financial centre dates back from the 1830 s. In 1838, the first commercial bank began its operations in Mauritius, set by a royal charter by the Queen of England because at that time Mauritius did not have the necessary regulatory body required. He adds that since then we have evolved substantially, we now offer international facilities to investors, including crossborder banking services, retail banking services and global business activities in Mauritius in the banking sector. The government of Mauritius is now spearheading a new platform of full commodities and derivative exchange which is going to be called the Mindex. This project will be two-fold; firstly, the spot and physical trading of gold and secondly, the trading of derivative instruments. The Mindex is for the creation of a new currency derivatives platform, where African currencies can be hedged against the U.S. dollar. He continued to the second part of his presentation by stating the current situation of the Mauritius IFC. The Mauritius IFC has more than 2 decades of experience in cross border investments and these figures certainly give us credibility. We currently have more than companies domiciled in Mauritius as investment structuring entities and as funds which are investing outside Mauritius. All those entities are tax residents in Mauritius and out of these companies, 967 are global funds, specialised funds, and private equity funds. Our asset under management is now 85 billion USD, a figure that has been computed so far, and we have up to 23 domestic and international banks. 10

11 press coverage at twitter.com/ametrade_f_i 11

12 testimonials High quality of speakers. Krishen Sukdev, CEO, GPAA, South Africa Thank you again for the organization of the conference. It was very interesting for us, good discussions and great speakers. Marine Serret, Business Development Executive, MCB Capital Markets PIAFRICA 2017 was very useful from the networking point of view and the issues discussed were critical issues cutting across the board. The event helped me to realise the problems I am dealing with are common problems and hopefully we will find a common solution at the conference to ease doing the business. Sibusiso Luthuli, CEO & Principal Officer, Eskom Pension & Provident Fund Thank you for the exposure. Looking forward to more similar events. Jyoti Iyer, CEO, Xanara Investment Management Pooling together the various high profiled intellectual resources in the space of social security across the continent to discuss investment topical issues has inspired a shift in thinking on the approach to this subject. Well done AME Trade. Simon Wafubwa, CEO, Enwealth Excellent composition of speakers. Hayford Amankwah, Investment Analyst, National Pensions, Ghana 12

13 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS On behalf of the organizers we would like to thank all of the following organizations who contributed to Pensions Funds & Alternative Investments: ASSOCIATE SPONSORS EXHIBITOR Official Airline ENDORSED BY FINANCIAL SERVICES PROMOTION AGENCY M A U R I T I U S LEAD MEDIA PARTNER MEDIA PARTNERS CONTACT DETAILS: piafrica@ametrade.org tel: +44 /0/