Duncan Burns has been appointed to succeed Daniel Reyes as the new Head of Investments, Asia Pacific, and a member of the Australian executive team, with a transition of roles expected to be complete by mid-December.

Mr. Reyes, who has served as Head of Investments and Head of Investment Strategy Group for Asia Pacific since 2017, will be relocating back to Vanguard’s headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania, to take up the role of Global Head of Investment Product.

Mr. Burns is currently the Head of Vanguard’s Equity Index Group for Asia-Pacific, based in Melbourne. In this role, he oversees the management of Vanguard’s Australian and global equity index portfolios and the firm’s trading operation in the Asia-Pacific region. Mr. Burns will retain oversight of the Equity Index Group in addition to assuming the Head of Investments role.

Duncan brings to the role more than 20 years of equity trading and investment management expertise, focusing on quant active investing, electronic trading, algorithmic strategies, market microstructure and transaction cost analysis.

Prior to joining Vanguard in 2013, Mr. Burns worked for seven years at Jacobs Levy Equity Management, a US provider of quantitative equity strategies for institutional clients. He started his career on Wall Street in 1996, working at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) where he spent several years managing the agency trading desk of DLJ’s retail brokerage arm.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Lafayette College and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. He is a CFA Charterholder and is a member of the New York Society of Securities Analysts.

Alexis Gray has been appointed as Head of the Investment Strategy Group (ISG) Asia Pacific. Alexis is currently a senior economist within ISG, Vanguard’s global research team that serves clients through developing and delivering research that serves as the basis for Vanguard’s investment principles and methodology, guides Vanguard’s global leadership and influences decisions about its investment offerings and portfolio construction.

Prior to her current role, Alexis served as a senior economist for Europe at Vanguard in London. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance with first class honours from the University of Melbourne, and a Master of Statistics from the London School of Economics.

Ms. Gray regularly serves as an ambassador for Vanguard, speaking at client events and industry conferences on a range of topics, and has authored numerous research papers on macroeconomics and investment issues.

In other changes, Head of Fixed Income for Asia Pacific, Geoff Parrish, will return to the Vanguard Group in the US to take up a new role as Global Head of Bond Indexing in October 2021.

Mr. Parrish will be replaced by Jean Bauler, CFA who joined Vanguard recently following 11 years with HSBC, most recently as Director, Markets Treasury in HSBC Australia. Mr. Bauler brings significant fixed income experience to Vanguard’s existing Asia-Pacific fixed income index group, who manage Vanguard’s portfolio of fixed income index funds and ETFs in the Asia-Pacific region.

Aidan Geysen, Senior Investment Strategist in ISG, will move into a new role as Investment Governance Senior Specialist in the Office of the Superannuation Trustee for Vanguard Super.

Mr. Geysen has played a leading role since 2016 within the ISG team in developing and delivering research insights into portfolio construction, exchange traded funds, and investment markets, and has served as an ambassador and media commentator for Vanguard. Recruitment is underway to replace this role with the group.

These changes form part of Vanguard’s long standing and successful program of rotating senior leadership roles across markets and portfolios, and growing the depth and breadth of experience and expertise within Vanguard’s senior leadership teams.

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Alexis Gray

Vanguard Australia has hosted its annual adviser roadshow virtually, featuring Global CEO Tim Buckley, Asia-Pacific Chief Economist Qian Wang and Senior Economist Alexis Gray.

This year’s theme ‘Forward’ heralds Vanguard’s commitment to supporting advisers manage client relationships and build their businesses in a world that is increasingly digitally enabled.

Speaking to nearly one thousand financial advisers, Mr Buckley acknowledged the new challenges facing advisers in the wake of COVID-19 and discussed ways they can more effectively manage business demands.

“Embrace advice technology,” said Mr Buckley. “It’s not a matter of beating robo[advisers], but rather streamlining your operations and driving more consistent, robust answers. Technology allows advisers to automate many rules-based activities such as portfolio management and rebalancing. It can simplify some of the more challenging financial planning tasks”.

Mr Buckley also reiterated why advisers are a highly valued part of Vanguard’s business and emphasised the importance of continuing to forge strong partnerships with advisers in Australia.

“Our mission is to take a stand for all investors, treat them fairly and give them the best chance for investment success. Our formula just has a few steps to it: deliver strong fund performance, pair that with trusted advice, and wrap both in a world class client experience. This formula delivers whether working directly with clients or through like-minded advisers.

Mr Buckley also provided insight into how Vanguard helped clients navigate the COVID-19 crisis.

“With markets reeling and economies shut down to contain the virus, investors were understandably worried. But our message to investors was clear and time tested and that is: stay the course. Don’t let short term volatility disrupt your long term portfolio because you’re diversified for a reason,” said Mr Buckley.

Developing a technology ecosystem for advisers

In line with Vanguard’s commitment to developing a technological ecosystem that helps enable advisers to meet client needs, Vanguard Australia Head of Intermediary, Rebecca Pope, announced the upcoming launch of Vanguard Retirement Income Builder.

The new digital tool will be an innovative way for advisers to work with their clients in determining investment, retirement income and wealth drawdown strategies.

“Vanguard Retirement Income Builder will help address the chief concern of many in or approaching retirement of how long their money will last” said Ms Pope. “This is a powerful tool which has been thoughtfully designed with a client friendly interface, to provide advisers a practical application of our total returns approach to retirement income”.

The Retirement Income Builder tool is set to launch in the coming weeks. More details will be provided when available.

Australia likely to outperform most developed market economies amid global recovery

Ms Wang and Ms Gray also highlighted to attending advisers the major themes of Vanguard’s 2021 Economic and Market Outlook: Approaching the Dawn, noting Australia’s economy is expected to normalise more quickly than other countries in 2021.

“Compared to other developed markets, Australia has been relatively successful in containing the virus so economic activity has not suffered as much. As a result, we expect GDP in Australia to return to pre-pandemic levels by mid-year, which is faster than most developed markets” said Ms Gray.

Furthermore, despite unprecedented government spending to support economies through the pandemic, government debt levels are sustainable and fiscal stimulus is likely to remain in place.

In response to concerns that there will be inflation consequences when government support is eventually unwound, Ms Wang said “high fiscal spending and easing monetary policy are no guarantee of higher inflation, especially in developed countries. In 2021, we are expecting more of a cyclical reflation with demand recovery to push up inflation, but we see this as a temporary overshooting rather than a sustained increase given structural forces such as technology advancement and globalisation”.

Ms Gray provided an overview of Vanguard’s long term return expectations noting that “despite the pandemic, our 10-year outlook for both Australian and international equities is better than a year ago, with median returns of between 5 -7 per cent expected. This is largely due to a drop in interest rates and long term bond yields, which are supportive of higher equity valuations. Bonds still have an important role to play in portfolios as a diversifier, rather than being evaluated as a growth asset”.

As detailed in Approaching the Dawn, Vanguard’s outlook for the global economy hinges critically on health outcomes and the production of an effective vaccine.

See the recording of Vanguard’s 2021 Virtual Adviser Roadshow.

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