Why Scottish fund managers should consider a move into investment solutions
Investment solutions is an area of fund management that relies on quantitative or actuarial skills - which is already stretched north of border - but there are reasons to believe that hiring is set to take off.
Last week, Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) revealed that it had hired Archie Struthers, formerly of BlackRock, to run its 'investment solutions' team.
The division was set up in 2009 by Andrew November, who moved to lead SWIP's global equities team last August. He has been building the team, which is now 44-strong, over the last 18 months.
There are still three more senior hires expected in the coming months, according to Lynne Dalgarno, director of HR at SWIP, and some new recruits lower down the ranks.
The idea of SWIP's investment solutions team is put together investment strategies for clients based around the products it has internally - from equities to fixed income to multi-asset funds. This allows them to win more business from clients, which have traditionally taken a specialist mandate approach; one fund manager to handle one particular asset class.
It would be wrong to describe this as a particularly new phenomenon - a number of fund managers have 'multi-asset solutions' teams, or some variant on this. Standard Life Investments, for instance, recently rebranded its Strategic Solutions Team, set up in 2004 by Euan Munro, as 'Multi-asset Investment Team'.
Whether it's the emperor's new clothes or not, investment solutions as a concept certainly seems to be gaining momentum. Goldman Sachs Asset Management, F&C, Schroders and UBS have all built out similar teams.
Dalgarno says that recruiting for these roles in Scotland has been a challenge. SWIP has either targeted people with a depth of experience in this area, such as Struthers, searched internationally for quantitative fund managers or turned to its in-house team of actuaries.
Joanna Black, director of Scottish asset management headhunters Black Appointments, says they've been handled roles to find quantitative fund managers recently, but that actuarial talent north of the border is already being stretched by sustained demand from insurance companies.
