When a psychedelically decorated invitation to Newbury Racecourse in Berkshire, England, lands on your desk, you don’t say no. Well, CIO doesn’t, anyway.
Albourne Partners celebrates its 21st anniversary this year, and as any self-respecting pan-Atlantic alternative investment consultancy would, it invited clients for a series of manager meetings and presentations before laying on an impressive party.
By the evening, more clients, fund managers, placement agents, and families have come together to enjoy music, food, drink, a carousel, and a helter skelter.
Investment professionals have to carry that weight of responsibility to meet deficits, and the burden is getting bigger, not getting better.Headlining on the stage at the end of the evening is a Beatles tribute band, featuring a very convincing John Lennon and a less convincing Paul McCartney. (The less said about Ringo, the better.) Hits blared out at a happy crowd—many of whom weren’t born when the songs were written.
This got CIO’s representative thinking: When a then 24-year-old Paul McCartney wrote “When I’m Sixty-Four” in 1966, we lived in a very different world.
Apple wasn’t even the Beatles’ label, never mind a technology company. Retirement policy in most countries meant you would have retired by your 64th birthday.
Of course, all things must pass.
Fast forward 50 years and the world of pensions has changed dramatically. A revolution has taken place, one might say—albeit a slow-moving one.
Because of rising life expectancy (which rose from 74.8 in 1966 to 82.8 in 2013 in the UK), and an increasingly difficult investment landscape, pressure is building on the pension industry to innovate. Investment professionals have to carry that weight of responsibility to meet deficits, and the burden is getting bigger, not getting better.
Fortunately, the positive atmosphere of Albourne’s party is contagious. Innovative companies are represented here, there, and everywhere. The access to new asset classes and investment strategies they provide can help those who are fixing a hole in their pension’s finances, and taking the long and winding road to get back to full funding.
Where will the industry be in 50 years’ time? Computers may well be running almost every aspect of investment. The default retirement age will likely be closer to 74 than 64. Those with deficits now will have faced the music, and either met all their obligations to pensioners or presented retirees with a whole load of misery.
If you think you’ve picked out all the Beatles songs above, email nreeve@assetinternational.com—but I bet you’ve missed something.