Insurance investment professionals were in a distinctly downbeat mood when they gathered in the grandeur of Skinners’ Hall for the final Insurance Investment Exchange seminar of 2018 at the end of November. 

 The below piece on deglobalisation first appeared in the Guardian on 2nd December 2016. Today’s paradigm is globalisation and free trade is its evangelical mantra.

Leading fund managers are continuing to explore how Artificial Intelligence, the powerful off spring of the Big Data revolution, might transform the staid world of fixed income, especially in the institutional sphere.

“Equivalence”. The cheers echoed around the streets of the City of London, as newspapers carried a succession of optimistic reports from the Brexit frontline. 

 This week, the latest Willis Towers Watson / Mergermarket report revealed that deal value for global insurance M&A was up €37bn in the first six months of 2018.

Fixed income is the heartland of insurer and pension fund investment strategies. Analysing trends, and predicting where interest rates and bond yields might be heading have been core competencies for generations.