Camilla Love

F3 – Future Females in Finance and the Financial Planning Association of Australia have partnered to offer 20 university students practical work experience to boost the skills and employability of aspiring young women into the financial services industry.

The Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) has awarded $25,000 to Fthree Pty Ltd (F3) to fund 20 work experience places with the aim of fostering a greater number of females pursuing a career in financial services.

The scholarship will be awarded to four groups of five female university students to complete a six-week work experience program within an industry participant organisation.

The scholarship comes as the FPA is the custodian of $1.5 million grant from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet earlier this year to improve the gender balance in the finance industry.

With figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealing that the finance and insurance industry has the highest gender pay gap, this is just one of the many challenges for women seeking to make a start in the financial services industry.

“We hope this program will help more female students get their foot in the door.” commented Camilla Love, founder of F3.

According to Ms Love, education and practical work experience can help accelerate the number of female students pursuing a career in financial services.

“Part of the problem is that many young women don’t know enough about the industry or are unsure whether they would fit in, culturally. Currently, 54% of students coming through our work experience programs studied Finance at University. 70% are now working in a finance-related role. This shows the importance of exposure to inspiring projects, developing critical networks and nudging them into the industry through the program.” commented Ms Love.

“We are really pleased to partner with F3 on this initiative. Having a good gender balance brings in fresh ideas and creates high performing teams. Through offering this scholarship with F3, we are investing in the future and the next generation of talent for the financial services sector.” Comments Dante De Gori CFP®, Chief Executive Officer of the FPA.

As F3 offers online remote work experience, these programs can be run all year round. As such, applications will open on an ‘as needs’ basis from 2021.

Learn more.

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Together the suite of actively managed fixed income ETFs aim to provide investors who prefer exchange traded opportunities a choice of conservative to moderately conservative alternatives to cash, term deposits and hybrid holdings, depending on their risk appetite.

“We are very pleased that Zenith has chosen to attribute this rating to ECOR. It’s a great testament that our fixed income offering is important to the ETF market and indeed the greater exchange tradeable ecosystem in meeting the need of investors who are looking for more easily accessible, transparent and flexible solutions” comments eInvest Managing Director, Camilla Love.

eInvest’s investment management partner, Daintree is co-founded and managed by Mark Mitchell, responsible for credit investments, and Justin Tyler, who specialises in interest rates and currency. Mitchell and Tyler are supported by an experienced team of fixed income experts.

In its report, Zenith commented: “Both portfolio managers have deep experience and skills across credit, interest rates and inflation.”

“Zenith believes the Fund (ECOR) may be suitable for those investors seeking a strategy that pays a regular income stream that is at a premium to cash. From a portfolio perspective, the Fund could potentially be used as an exposure to Australian Fixed Interest, and may blend well with a range of complementary strategies to produce a balanced set of investment outcomes” Zenith said.

ECOR is tradeable through your online broker and accessible via various industry platforms.

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In this newly created role, Mr. Calderwood will be responsible for promoting and expanding the use of active ETFs among Australian financial advisers, against the backdrop of the growing demand for active ETFs from individual investors.

“Tamas is an important addition to eInvest and brings extensive experience and expertise across the industry and Australian market, which will be key to eInvest’s expansion,” said Ms Love.

Ms. Love added: “We are committed to delivering pioneering active ETF solutions in response to the changing needs of clients, and Tamas’ expertise and solid experience will further strengthen our capabilities.”

Mr. Calderwood has spent more than 20 years working with leading investors in Australia and abroad, most recently as a National Manager at BetaShares. Mr. Calderwood said: “I am truly excited to join eInvest and to work with them on the build of the active ETF business in Australia. eInvest’s growth comes at an exciting time for the industry as more and more retail investors seek choice, flexibility and transparency of tradable strategies that are both independently and actively managed.”

Prior to joining eInvest, Mr. Calderwood was most recently the Australian ETF Manager at Beta Shares. Before that, he was vice president of client coverage at index provider, MSCI, and previously held roles at CIBC World Markets, Bloomberg, and ANZ, working in London, New York and Sydney. He has more than 20 years investment experience and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School. He received his undergraduate and Masters degree from the University of Sydney.

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F3 was created to encourage young women to take up careers in financial services, and offers structured programs centred on education, access to work experience and strong female role models.

Louise Watson, Managing Director for Natixis Investment Managers in Australia, said that financial services should be an attractive career for both men and women.

“Financial services cover a wide range of sectors and jobs and offers plenty of intellectual challenge in addition to financial rewards, but unfortunately, it’s an industry that has traditionally attracted far more men than women. While we have made progress, gender imbalance is still evident.

“Interestingly, the World Economic Forum ranks Australia 39th in the world in terms of gender gap – above the global average but much lower than our closest neighbour New Zealand, which ranked 7^th.

“Our low rank was in part determined by our even lower rank of 46^th in the area of women’s economic participation and access to opportunity, which is why improving participation by fostering the next generation of women in financial services is a crucial step in the battle for gender equality,” said Ms Watson.

Natixis’ partnership with F3 will cover a range of initiatives, including six-week work experience programs for university students. In these programs, groups of young women are given real business problems to solve, with the support of a skilled mentor provided by Natixis.

Camilla Love, Founder of F3, said that she was excited to add a global investment manager like Natixis to the growing list of F3’s corporate partners.

“Women are still woefully under-represented in financial services in Australia, so it’s great to have major players encouraging the next generation of young women. When we formed F3, our aim was to try to close the gap by doing things like work experience a bit differently.

“Experience tells us that women working in teams to solve real problems is a more effective way of introducing them to the challenges and excitement of financial services than the traditional work experience model – which often saw young women working alone in a male-dominated office and possibly feeling intimidated or unsure about the suitability of financial services as a career,” Ms. Love explained.

In conclusion, Ms. Watson said that she was looking forward to working with F3 and to meeting the young women she hopes will become the next wave of female executives in Australian financial services.

“I agree with Camilla. Success is when organisations like F3 are no longer needed, because gender imbalance is no longer a problem. I hope and expect that our partnership with F3 will go some way towards achieving that aim,” said Ms Watson.

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Damien Cottier

eInvest, a distributor of exchange traded managed fund solutions, has launched Australia’s first actively managed ESG exchange traded fund (ETF) .

The new fund, eInvest Future Impact Small Caps Fund (managed fund) (ASX: IMPQ),is also Australia’s first Small Cap Active ESG ETF and is managed by multi-award winning affiliate, Perennial Value Management. The fund aims to provide long-term capital growth by investing in Australian and New Zealand small and mid cap stocks that contribute positively and sustainably to society and the environment.

The founding belief of this new strategy is that investors in environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) portfolios should not have to sacrifice their financial objectives in order to achieve an ESG impact. The fund aims not to compromise on investment returns to achieve social objectives by benchmarking itself against the S&P/ASX Small Ordinaries Accumulation index, and is a well-diversified, actively managed portfolio that may hold up to 70 Australian or New Zealand stocks.

The strategy pursues listed investment opportunities and focuses on companies that take into consideration ESG criteria and/or conduct business in industries which are favourable having regard to ESG criteria. Companies that are misaligned with sustainability practices are excluded, such as those with more than 10% revenue in fossil fuels, alcohol, tobacco, weapons, forestry activities, gambling and unhealthy fast foods. Perennial Value proactively monitors ESG-related metrics for companies in the investment universe and engages with them to determine their approach to ESG.

Camilla Love, Managing Director of eInvest, said: “Sustainable investing is increasingly an important focus for many investors, and for the first time, Australian investors can access an actively managed ESG ETF.  Our fund not only gives investors access to specialist active management skills through a convenient and lower-cost ASX tradable structure, it also provides the tools to make a social impact without compromising on returns.”

Damian Cottier, Portfolio Manager at Perennial Value, said: “We are seeking to invest in small and mid-cap companies that are making a positive contribution to a sustainable future.  We have a strong heritage in investing in the under-researched small cap universe which makes us well placed to uncover interesting investment opportunities for the fund.

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The expansion follows the 2018 launch of the eInvest Income Generator Fund (ASX:EIGA) and is a natural part of eInvest’s continued evolution as a complete provider of Active ETFs in Australia.

Camilla Love, Managing Director of eInvest, said: “Partnering with independent investment managers at the local and global level is a natural next step in eInvest’s continued evolution as a complete provider of Active ETF solutions. We have the platform to innovate in areas where active management can truly add value and deliver pioneering solutions in response to the changing needs of clients.

“The expansion will give investors choice, flexibility and transparency of independent professionally managed strategies that would otherwise be available to institutional investors.”

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