Roger Urwin

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Managing culture with risk management techniques

The interaction between governance, culture and performance is increasingly a topic around asset owner board tables. But little has been written about the relationship between culture and the financial crisis, and how to change culture in financial services organisations. Andrew Lo, professor of finance at MIT, has come up with a proposal to change culture

Strong governance begins with robust culture and teams in place

Keith Ambachtsheer, Director Emeritus, Rotman International Centre for Pension Management argues that good governance begins with having “the right team in the room.” This means robust human resource teams, the ability to address issues around understaffing and raising the effectiveness of board members. “Board governance is still a work in progress today,” he argues, speaking

All aboard the change express as Railpen leaves the station

At the end of a corporate review process that lasted eight months, involved 23 meetings of a steering committee and produced 60 working papers, the UK railways pension fund Railpen was left with 422 action items. “We’ve done 224 of them,” Chris Hitchen, Railpen chief executive, told the Fiduciary Investors Symposium (FIS) at Harvard University.

The investment model for asset owners: is there a best-practice version?

In the last of a series of articles exclusively for conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, Roger Urwin, head of global content at Towers Watson examines the asset owner investment models that are recognised as best practice, questioning whether there are patterns to the models of success. The best-practice investing model could either involve how you do it or what

PFZW reformulates investment principles

PFZW, the €150 billion ($205 billion) Dutch pension fund for the health care industry, has created a new investment framework which is the result of an 18-month soul-searching journey under a project called “The White Sheet of Paper”. The framework will translate into policy and implementation steps starting from 2015. Jaap van Dam, PGGM´s chief

Challenges facing the world’s biggest funds

In the coming weeks, Towers Watson will be writing a series of articles, exclusive to conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, that look at key challenges facing large asset owners. These will focus on specific practicalities that many global funds are encountering such as the role of internal teams. To put these challenges in context, this first article by global