Author(s): Benedict Oscar Lau (20th Corporate Communications subcommittee member)
SGX Auditorium
After the resounding success of Nanyang Business School’s Alternative Investment Symposium (AIS) in 2018, AIS 2019 was back again at the SGX auditorium on 23 February. AIS was organised with the aim of attracting like-minded individuals from various backgrounds with an interest in Alternative Investments (AI). This year, we were privileged to have six distinguished speakers who shared their views and insights on their respective niche areas.
Our first speaker was Mr Chua I-Min, a trainer from SGX Academy. He shared on the topic of Hedging Blue-Chip Stocks with Singapore Stock Daily Leverage Certificates (DLCs). He touched on how improvements could be made to the conventional buy-and-hold strategy in today’s volatile market which faces trade wars and increasing interest rates.
Next, we had Mr Wong Kon How, an SGX academy trainer who spoke on REITs and S-REITs investing. He explained the importance of being able to differentiate the characteristics of REITs and shares. This would help an investor better understand how returns were generated and ultimately help them to achieve their specific investment objectives.
The third speaker was Ms Jo Murphy, the Managing Director (Asia Pacific) of CAIA. She presented on the future of AI, noting how AI has increased nearly three-fold over the last decade and has been projected to increase even more in areas such as private equity and hedge funds. Furthermore, AI is a crucial tool in helping today’s institutional investors diversify and that will continue to be the case in the near future.
Our next speaker Ms Genevieve Heng is a Portfolio Manager of Anthem Asia Myanmar SME Venture Fund who shared her story on how she got into the sphere of AI. Her background was in IT but she wasn’t satisfied with her career back then. That led her to explore different aspects of business where she eventually completed an MBA before deciding to focus on finance. She ended up specialising in Private Equity during the Asian Financial Crisis even though PE was not as popular as it is today. She challenged the audience to never be satisfied with the status quo and always to strive for the better by first bettering themselves.
Following that, we had Mr Dennis Wong from Golden Equator Capital Venture. The charismatic Senior Associate presented on the topic of Venture Capital – an Alternative Investment strategy in volatile times. He shared about how investors have been prompted to consider AI as the markets have been fraught with volatility and uncertainties in recent years. He noted that while gold and real estate was the go-to traditional alternative asset, private capital and venture capital investments have been on the rise.
Lastly, we had Mr Vikas Jain from Funding Societies. The Senior Director of Marketing & CX shared about P2P Lending. P2P Lending is a method of debt financing that enables individuals to borrow and lend money without official financial institutions such as banks acting as intermediaries. While he admitted that the risk in P2P lending was high, the returns offered were equally attractive and would well compensate the risk taken.
As the event drew to a close, many stayed back to network with the speakers and with one another. It was heartening to see people from different walks of life bonding with each other over shared interests at our event. We are delighted to have CAIA as our platinum sponsor without which this event would not have been possible. We thank all our participants and look forward to hosting the event again next year. See you in NBS AIS 2020!