University Cements its Top 20 Place in the Guardian's University Guide for Business & Management

The ICMA Centre is now providing professional and academic programmes that specialise in Financial Risk Management. The new MSc in Financial Risk Management has been developed in close consultation with leading industry players to help meet the growing demand for properly qualified professional risk managers in banks, asset managers, corporates and regulatory bodies. Download Brochure.

Fidelity, the asset manager with $2.4 trillion assets under management, recently announced the launch of two index mutual funds with a 0% fee! This announcement is interesting for several reasons. First, the asset management industry has been involved in an intense price war and this new fee level of 0% represents a very tough benchmark for the competition to beat. Not surprisingly, the share price of rival asset managers fell by a few percentage points shortly after the announcement. Second, the new fee level is unusual as it indicates that, for the first time, investors could get exposure to both US and international equities without incurring any fee. This is a curious business decision. How will Fidelity manage to pay for all its expenses? Will this product be a loss-making venture? Is there more to it than meets the eyes?

If you live in the UK, you may have seen the Channel 4 television programme on 28th February this year (2013) entitled ‘Bank on Dave’. Burnley Savings and Loans to give it its other name, is a company (not a bank) which offers 5% ‘deposit’ rates to lenders and offers loans to those who cannot obtain funding from the high street banks. So how does Dave do this when the high street banks offer no interest at all or perhaps only ½ or 1%? In fact ‘Dave’ is one of a new breed of ‘brokers’ who simply introduce lenders and borrowers to each other. The key difference from banks is that banks have a balance sheet with a depositor contract on one side and a separate contract with its borrowers on the other whereas a peer to peer company has no such contracts and indeed is not even involved at all in borrowing or lending! This is because in P2P, lending contracts are directly between borrower and lenders and the P2P company does not take ‘deposits’ on to its own balance sheet or keep the loans its customers make on its balance sheet.