Key Takeaways from the Irish Funds Annual Global Conference

Just over a month ago, I was lucky enough to attend the 2022 Irish Funds Conference in the stunning Convention Centre in Dublin alongside over 500 other attendees from over twenty countries. This was my first funds conference and I was genuinely excited to learn more about the industry in which I operate, but I don’t think I was expecting quite the level of insight and positivity I ended up walking away with.

The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Resilience, Emergence, and Growth’ and with over 52,000 people working in Financial Services across the island and 17,000 directly employed in the funds sector, the timing couldn’t have been better to shine a light on these areas. There was such a healthy admiration and appreciation of employees in the wake of such a turbulent period and discussions on just how important they are in the success of the industry going forward. Ann Prendergast of SSGA spoke passionately about “the importance of employees as stakeholders in all of our businesses” and Jim Barry of BlackRock touched on this when speaking about the Dublin Funds space:

“The key to Dublin’s prosperity over the next period is to look after the people who work here”.

There were further celebrations over just how proud the Dublin candidate market can be in existing as such an attractive prospect globally for firms. Organisations seeking to set up or bolster their European presence would be remiss in overlooking Dublin in terms of financial services talent. Charlene Kennedy of PGIM, the investment management business of Prudential, talked about how her US-based business viewed the talent base in Ireland when looking at scaling the firm:

 “Choosing Ireland was a win-win in terms of the available skills and product knowledge”.

In terms of growth for the sector, the hot-button topic across a lot of the talks was the introduction and refinement of remote-working, with the last two to three years essentially being a huge experiment with us all being the guinea pigs. Certainly for some this is the answer they’ve been looking for in affording a true work/life balance, with Michael Dempsey of Mercer citing being “Supportive and adaptive to change” as being crucial for businesses in attracting and retaining talent in today’s market. It was however acknowledged that it’s not a one size fits all endeavour, with speakers addressing real concerns and worries of dual-cultures emerging and asking just how you can build and maintain a culture when staff aren’t in the office or inhabiting the same space. It was interesting to take part in one of the many live polls being taken on the day regarding just this, with a panel asking the audience ‘Would you actively start looking for a new role if you were asked to do 5 days in the office?’, with the results below showing that over 40% would and 30% would certainly think about it.

The takeaway when all panels and discussions had wrapped up was undeniably that the funds industry in Ireland is one with their finger on the pulse, with industry experts and leaders in attendance spending the bulk of the day discussing just how they can use the challenges faced and lessons learnt over the last period to continue the excellent growth of this sector going forward. The CEO of Irish Funds, Pat Lardner, cemented the confidence with which we can have and should have in the sector’s growth for 2022 and beyond:

“With each passing year, the funds industry is increasingly more important to Ireland”.

If you're looking for key hires in the Financial Services market or looking for a new job opportunity, please feel free to reach out to me for a confidential chat: j.craig@masonalexander.ie