Do People Like Nudges?
With July being the most popular travel month, bigger credit card bills start coming due. Major financial institutions are using financial nudges, such as texts or emails, that encourage consumers to make their payments in a timely fashion. But has anyone stopped to ask, “Do consumers like financial nudges?” A recent research article surveyed over two thousand Australian bank customers to determine the level of sentiment. “People generally approve of financial interventions,” concluded the authors Merle van den Akker, behavioral scientist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Cass Sunstein, professor at Harvard Law School. Professor Sunstein, along with Richard Thaler, […]
Finance and AI
Artificial intelligence is transforming the fields of investment and asset management. Finance professionals must learn how to leverage predictive analytics and machine learning in order to maintain a competitive edge in the new AI-driven financial landscape. In a webinar on February 26, 2025, two experts in the field presented a round-table discussion titled “AI Tools and Techniques: Revolutionizing Investment and Asset Management in 2025.” They touched on issues that will be discussed more fully at the upcoming conference, CFA Institute LIVE 2025 to be held in Chicago, 4-7 May, 2025. The panel moderator, Brian Pisaneschi, [center photo] is an affiliate […]
Dirty Deals
“The global plastic waste trade is an environmental disaster hiding in plain sight, fuelling organised crime, working conditions that amount to human rights violations and devastation to human health and the environment.” This is according to a report released on November 5, 2024, by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in Britain. ♠️ Click here to access “Dirty Deals Part 2″ from the EIA website.
How to Measure Nature Risk?
In June 2024, Dawn Lalonde, a beekeeper in northern Ontario noticed a sudden die-off of about a million bees. The bee die-off affects much more than the amount of honey she can collect from her hives. Without bees, local crops and orchards do not get adequately pollinated, leading to lower yields. This is but one recent example of a type of risk coming into new prominence in business and economics: nature risk. Nature risk, the loss of things in the world not created or domesticated by humans, affects businesses and economies directly, by impacting operations such as lack of pollination, […]
R.I.P. Ross Gelbspan
Approximately three decades ago, scientists studying the earth’s atmosphere began to raise concerns about global warming. To counteract the public outcry, certain research institutions promoted the message that “everything was okay.” Soon, a campaign of disinformation by oil and gas lobbyists to sow doubt about their findings. One journalist, Ross Gelbspan, dug deep into the research. He looked at who funded the research and found the oil & gas industry was covertly funding climate change denialism. His series of articles alerted the public that there was a campaign to deny climate change. The articles, collected, formed the book The Heat […]
California Perspective
Imagine feeling shut out from important decisions in your community. Imagine feeling you were always the last choice when it came to hiring for the good jobs. If social studies showed this was always due to systemic bias, wouldn’t you want to work for change—if not for yourself, at least for the generation to come? This is the motivation behind the movement for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). What are the fundamental principles to accelerate change around DEI? Can financial institutions adapt to DEI—and can their regulatory body, CFA Institute, lead the way? To showcase thriving financial institutions that have […]
Carbon, Cargo, Covid
As we slide into summer 2022, what are the big factors affecting the markets? Carbon, cargo, Covid. Governments and companies are starting to address the excessive carbon dioxide that is causing climate change. Interruptions of the supply chain, heavily dependent on cargo ships, continue to worsen operational risk. Meanwhile, the global economy is still dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. On May 2, 2022, Derek Walter, head of the Institutional Asset Management Committee at the CFA Society Toronto, moderated two panelists during a webinar to discuss the underlying drivers of market changes. “We need to separate the short-term from the long-term […]
Ethical Decision Making
Question 1. Do you think that one’s belief system triggers one’s actions? Or does one act and then justify one’s actions by changing one’s beliefs? Question 2. Is an effective leader one who adheres to a constant belief? Or is the effective leader one who adheres to “situational ethics”? These are two dilemmas that were explored in more depth on February 8, 2022, when Kevin Veenstra, Associate Professor at De Groote Business School at McMaster University, presented a virtual workshop on ethical decision making to members of the CFA Society Toronto. Veenstra’s research focuses on personality and unconscious motives and […]
Net-Zero Buildings
How do we build our homes and cities for a sustainable future? Climate change is such a huge, complex problem that tackling it can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, many organizations are addressing various parts of this colossal puzzle. One aspect is the “built environment.” Can existing buildings be modified to cope with climate change? Can buildings be redesigned to have net zero effect on the environment? On July 1, 2021, a panel of experts gave their thoughts on matters relating to climate change and buildings, as part of the New York Times Climate Hub series of webinars. This is the “Built […]
Who’s Minding the Bots?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being implemented in nearly all sectors of the economy at an increasing rate. A 2019 survey by Gartner showed that 37 percent of organizations had already implemented AI in some form. When it comes to integrating AI into your company, what are the risks? What are the opportunities? On March 12, 2021, the Industry Relations and Corporate Governance Committee of the CFA Society Toronto convened a panel of experts to look at how effectively a company’s corporate governance can provide proper oversight and avoid mistakes. In other words, “who and how we will mind the bots.” […]