Archives: Ambassadors

Andrew Vallner is a Sydney-based asset consultant with around 30 years’ experience in actuarial and investment fields.

He has worked as a fund manager with the CUNA Mutual Insurance Group, managed the NSW Public Trustee’s investments and worked in a range of actuarial roles in insurance, investments and leasing. At CUNA Mutual in 1995, Andrew pioneered institutional investment in listed investment companies, outperforming the index by around 600bp through a deep-discount portfolio. LICs remain a major focus of disclosure and reform even today.

Andrew has been an investment researcher and consultant since 2005, gaining notoriety by flagging likely capital losses in AAA securities in 2007 and in some cases rating them “distressed” even prior to issue! This was followed by a number of independent expert engagements during post-GFC litigation including some in the billion dollar range.

Andrew has led independent asset consultant CPG Research & Advisory for 10 years. Clients having included insurers, HNW advisory groups, and superannuation – a large client was ranked #1 over multi-year periods in SelectingSuper surveys in Cash, Conservative and High Growth categories.

Andrew was appointed a consultant to the World Bank in 2018, working with the Sri Lankan national superannuation fund (the $US13bn Employees’ Provident Fund).

 

Simon is an experienced executive focused on driving impact across the private, public and social sectors, and at the forefront of global impact investing movement in Australia and the UK. Simon led strategy, market development, policy and research for the world’s first social investment bank, Big Society Capital, in the UK between 2012 and 2018.

 He helped pioneer a number of landmark policy reforms to encourage more impactful investment, including the first venture capital tax relief to incentivise individual investment into charities and social enterprise that became law in 2014, reforming the regulation of investment duties to enable greater investment for social purpose, and reforming company law to incorporate greater capital raising by community interest companies. He also built a number of key pillars of the impact investment ecosystem, including a research council from across the public, private and social sectors, and a growing movement to develop new social pensions products that connect individual investors with the social causes they care about through their pension (superannuation) investment funds.

 He worked with a range of institutional investors, venture capital investors, trusts and foundations and advisors to help develop partnerships to promote investment with purpose. He also has co-authored a number of leading publications including the Social Business Frontier, 2014, and Good Pensions, 2015.

 He has also been an international corporate lawyer with Linklaters, and a senior adviser and director in the UK Government and NSW Government.

 He holds a Master in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Bachelors of Commerce and Laws from the University of Queensland.

Dr Frank Ashe has a consulting and capability building practice, specialising in risk governance, behavioural finance, risk management, and investments.  He covers the gamut from culture and behavioural psychology, to corporate strategy, to technical matters in derivative risk, to asset-liability management, to comparative corporate governance, and on.  He is an Honorary Associate Professor with the Macquarie University Applied Finance Centre.

Dr Ashe has worked for over 35 years in Australia, Canada, Africa and Asia with consultancies, insurance companies, investment management firms, bond dealers, and financial software houses.  A recent example of pro bono capability building work was through Actuaries Without Borders, where he ran two courses with IFAGE, in Dakar, Senegal, lifting the capability of people in their nascent insurance industry.

He is a regular presenter at industry seminars and colloquia, and was President of the Australian Q-Group 2002-2011.  He regularly travels through East Asia and South Asia, consulting, presenting seminars, in-house training and Masters level University courses.  Dr Ashe is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Dr Ashe obtained his PhD in Operations Research from the University of New South Wales.  He majored in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Statistics, and Actuarial Science, with First Class Honours in Mathematics, from Macquarie University.  He balances this with lifelong learning in the human condition.

Dr Frank Ashe is a company director, and has a consulting practice, specialising in risk governance, behavioural finance, risk management, and investments.  He covers the full gamut of analysis, from the qualitative, such as behavioural economics, to very quantitative analysis.  He is an Honorary Associate Professor with the Macquarie University Applied Finance Centre.

Dr Ashe has worked for over 35 years in Australia, Canada, Africa and Asia with consultancies, insurance companies, investment management firms, universities, bond dealers, and financial software houses.

He is a regular invited speaker at conferences and was President of the Australian Q-Group 2002-2011.  From Australia, he regularly travels through East Asia and South Asia, speaking, consulting, presenting seminars, in-house training and Masters level University courses.

Harry Chemay is an experienced finance professional focused on delivering innovative investment solutions. His experience spans a period in excess of 23 years, incorporating:

Wealth management/advisory – assisting HNW individuals and SMSF trustees to take control of their own retirement outcomes; Institutional asset consulting – assisting superannuation funds (amongst others) to execute their fiduciary in respect of investment strategy; and a Co-Founder of one of Australia’s first digital advice solutions, delivering highly transparent, low-cost investment advice & asset management to cohorts previously priced out of such services.

Harry commenced his career in financial services within KPMG’s private wealth division. He advised primarily within the accounting sector, with senior adviser roles at Horwath (now part of Grant Thornton) and WHK (now Crowe Horwath).

After more than a decade in wealth management Harry transitioned from personal to institutional advice, joining Mercer investment consulting.

He spent some 4 years at Mercer, providing advice and asset consulting services to superannuation funds, university endowments and financial planning firms. During that time he completed the Certified Investment Management Analyst programme, offered by the then Investment Management Consultants Association (now the CIMA Society of Australia).

Prior to co-founding Clover, Harry consulted in the profit-to-member pension space, with a particular focus on retirement income innovation. His work resulted in an award-winning retirement income solution, one of the first in Australia created to deal with the complexities of sequencing risk.

An active participant within the wealth and superannuation space, Harry is a regular contributor to investment websites in Australia and overseas, writing on a range of topics across investing, financial planning and FinTech.

Harry is also a sought-after presenter, both in Australia and abroad. He has spoken at numerous conferences, facilitated Australian masterclass panels for S&P Dow Jones Indices, and in 2017 was invited to deliver a presentation on Robo-Advice at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul. Other invitees to this prestigious conference included former First Lady and Presidential Candidate Hilary Clinton, former French President Francois Hollande and former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Harry holds a Bachelor of Business (Banking & Finance) from Monash University in addition to post-graduate qualifications in finance.

Désirée is a Senior Associate at MSCI Inc, a leading provider of ESG Research, Indexes, Analytics and Real Estate benchmarks.

As ESG specialist with expertise in environmental systems & innovation and sustainability best practice, Désirée consults investors, companies and industry bodies on global ESG trends, reporting requirements and the integration of ESG Research data and analytics into investment decision-making.

Désirée has worked internationally across both public and private sectors. She has helped design and deliver corporate sustainability strategies, government programs, and climate risk mitigation & adaptation plans. In late 2015, as technical manager for the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), she was appointed by Directorate-General (DG) Environment (European Commission) as a peer reviewer for the Product and Organisational Environmental Footprint (PEF/OEF) Pilot Phase.

Her expertise ranges from corporate social responsibility programs, sustainable agricultural practices and ethical sourcing, to green real estate and precinct-scale infrastructure planning.

Désirée is an Urban Scholar with the UN Global Compact – Cities Programme, a member of the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia (RIAA), Women in Super (WIS), IGCC’s Zero-Carbon Emissions Working Group and, since 2011, she has been an Al Gore Climate Ambassador.

Désirée holds a BSc degree in ‘Environmental Science’, and a

MSc degree in ‘European Environmental Policy & Regulation’.

Darren McShane is an experienced regulator and policy maker across a wide spectrum of financial services.

Darren provides advice on regulatory and policy matters to regulatory bodies, multilateral agencies, industry bodies and private firms. He is a regular contributor to conferences and seminars focused on improving outcomes for consumers of financial services. Amongst his published work is ASIC Report 581 “Review of ASIC Regulatory Guide 97: Disclosing fees and costs in PDSs and periodic statements”, published in July 2018.

Until March 2017, he was the Chief Regulation & Policy Officer and Executive Director of the Hong Kong pension regulator, the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority (MPFA). He was an Executive Director of the MPFA for a period of 15 years and guided the Hong Kong pension system through a series of major reforms.

He was also, until he finished his role with the MPFA in March 2017, the Chairman of the Technical Committee of the International Organisation of Pension Supervisors (IOPS). In that role he had responsibility for steering the work of IOPS in setting global standards and good practices for the regulation and supervision of private pension funds around the world.

Prior to his time at the MPFA, he held a number of senior roles with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and its predecessor bodies and he also worked for a period with the fund management regulator in the United Kingdom (IMRO).

Scott A J MacDonald is the Managing Director of a Sydney based consulting firm, where for the past 3 plus decades he has devoted over 90 percent of his professional time to the practice of investment management, risk management and finance.

He has extensive experience in governance and cross border compliance and as a chief investment officer. Scott has deep knowledge as a Responsible Manager of AFSL (Australian Financial Services Licenses) and has been licensed since 1987 and is currently a ‘key person’ on an AFSL. His recent activities include corporate advisory and monetization of AFSL working with legal counsel, regulators and owners of AFSL. In addition, he has been involved in two joint ventures around wealth management and education into China and has presented and written extensively on matters of wealth management, global investment management and the impact on investors of the rapidly changing regulatory environment. This knowledge is based partly on his experience working with Australian, European and USA asset consultants, fund managers and with a USA family office and global hedge fund (structured products) business which he went on to establish in Australia.

Scott is a frequent speaker at conferences and finance events and serves both on a private family office Advisory Committee in Sydney and Boston based Capital Hedge/FINTRX global advisory board and consults to The World Economic Journal, London. He is a co- Founder and Chairman of the not for profit International Family Office Association Ltd, China and Sydney. He lives in Sydney, is interested in sailing, swimming, golf, tennis, horse racing international economics and he is potentially available for CIO; NED, investment committee or AFSL governance roles.

Education, Licenses & Credentials

ASIC (Australian Securities and Investment Commission) Responsible Manager/ Key Person (Trustee) – Australian Financial Services Licence – AFSL – No: 444079

New South Wales, Department of Justice (State Governor endorsed) Justice of the Peace – No: 221890.

NSW Property Stock and Business Agents Act 2002 – Strata Management and Real estate Agent – Licence No: 20171325

Bachelor of Business, (Banking and Finance), Monash University, 1991

Master of Commerce, (Economic History), University of NSW, 1995
Master of Arts, (International Relations), University of NSW, 1996

The Oxford Advanced Management Programme, Said Business School, Oxford University, 2008

Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia – AIF., Accredited Investment Fiduciary, 2009

National Certificate IV., Risk and Compliance Management, Governance Risk Compliance Institute, 2016

NSW Certificate IV’s., in Property Services (Real Estate) and (Operations), Australian College of Professionals, 2017

Scott was a founding member of CFA Institute in Sydney 1996 and a member from 1993 some 15yrs.  Scott was also a member of the Investment Management Consultants Association (IMCA) for more than 10 years and since 2009 an ASFA – AIF; Accredited Investment Fiduciary. In addition Scott was a member of The Governance Risk Compliance Institute of Australia and is an Affiliate Member of Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) www.garp.org.