Exclusive interview with John Coombe, Executive Director, JANA Investment Advisers
GLOBAL INVESTMENT INSIGHTS
“A five year view on how to best service different clients will be essential for survival in a rapidly changing investment environment caused by AI. Some challenges will be overcome but others are long term structural in nature.”
John Coombe, Executive Director, JANA Investment Advisers
John Coombe is an Executive Director at JANA Investment Advisers with more than three decades of experience in investment consulting. He joined JANA in 1988 and has played a significant role in the company’s development during his time there. His expertise spans investment strategy, asset allocation and investment manager selection.
In this exclusive interview with Global Investment Institute, John discusses some of the notable recent developments in the operating landscape for investment consultants and how he expects the environment to evolve into the future, the client challenges and needs he is focused on addressing to assist them in navigating the current investment environment, trends he is seeing in how clients are allocating capital and how the consolidation in superannuation has impacted JANA’s offering and how they work with clients.
Q. Your career at JANA Investment Advisers has impressively spanned close to four decades, what have been some notable recent developments in the operating landscape for investment consultants?
A. The role of government legislation has had a major impact on the operating model for consultants, particularly in the superannuation environment – Trustee requirements for CPD points, Your Future Your Super (YFYS), outsourcing requirements, among a host of others. The growth in mega funds through mergers has seen the increasing use of internal teams not only to manage external managers, but to manage money internally. Trustees see consultants as providing information on the impact of government legislation, industry trends and where their investment team sits in this landscape. Smaller funds partner with consultants to help them compete with the larger funds to gain greater coverage of investment markets.
Outsourced clients are mostly interested in how our investment decisions affect the investments they have placed in our investment management services.
Q. In your role as Executive Director at JANA, which client challenges and needs are you focused on addressing, in supporting them to navigate the current investment environment?
A. It depends on the client. For large super funds, we look to be a research partner, examining topics on which internal management would like an outside view , from the macro environment and market structures to manager configurations and other ad hoc investment issues. Medium-sized super funds want help on due diligence, the macro environment, market structure, managers, secondary transactions and ESG. Our Implemented Consulting (Outsourced CIO) clients have outsourced the investment issues to us, so it is vital to keep them informed about what we see in markets and how we are altering the investment vehicles they invest. All this relies on having talented people within the firm who are viewed as trusted partners and focused on delivering the best outcomes for clients’ beneficiaries.
Q. What trends are you seeing in terms of how your clients are allocating capital?
A. A growing number of clients are moving towards a Total Portfolio Approach, but with limitations to the approach due to fee constraints, liquidity and resilience of overall investment offerings.
The trend towards lower fees through co-investments has continued in real assets as a means of ensuring investment options are within fee budgets.
Implementation of the investment strategy has also been an area of focus, to ensure that basis points aren’t being lost in execution. This has resulted in large increases in the treasury functions of large super funds.
DAA programs have also become a major feature, as funds look to take advantage of market inefficiencies through systematic asset allocation decisions with specific risk bands. This is a very cost effective way of altering the liquid market exposures.
Q. How has the continued wave of consolidation among superannuation funds over the last decade impacted JANA’s offering and how you work with clients?
A. For our superannuation clients, our research teams work closely with internal teams on investment solutions that benefit members, including strategic asset allocations, glide paths for MySuper lifecycles, retirement solutions to asset class configurations. This may also include undertaking operational due diligence on managers for some clients.
We provide Trustee Investment Committees and Boards with governance support, insights on regulatory developments and views on investment markets and trends we see across asset owners.
For clients that want to outsource their investments, we provide investment solutions tailored to their specific investment objectives and risk tolerances.
We also provide advice and investment solutions to our wealth clients.
Q. How do you see the operating landscape for investment consultants evolving from here and what is on the horizon for JANA?
A. As long as there is a need for independent advice to clients from a trusted source the key aspects of consulting will not change – impacts of government regulations, view on markets, views on evolution of market structure, well researched views on investment managers and asset class structures, ability to assess merits of primary and co-investments in real asset class configurations.
How these are delivered to various client segments will be an interesting challenge in a world of A.I.
I also believe that we have to create the right corporate environment that attracts and retains talent so that our clients have access to smart investors that have a broad remit to research topics, markets, managers etc.
John Coombe, Executive Director, JANA Investment Advisers
John is an Executive Director at JANA Investment Advisers and has been with the organisation since 1988.
During his tenure, John has played a significant role in the company’s development. John specialises on managing and advising major superannuation funds in his areas of expertise, spanning investment strategy, asset allocation and investment manager selection.
Global Investment Institute is Australia’s leading provider of conferences for capital allocators.
We connect institutional investors, family office and private wealth investment leaders with peers and global investment experts to share knowledge and thought leadership in a private, collegiate and discussion-focussed setting, conducted under Chatham House Rule. Attendance is by invitation-only.
We host private gatherings for investment leaders across three distinct segments:
Institutional
Family Offices
Private Wealth (institutional-scale)
Each segment has its own series of dedicated events for delegates to connect with peers and we have an unrivalled network of capital allocators who we invite to attend.
UPCOMING EVENTS
