Former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela was the keynote speaker today (13 June 2017) at the launch of Momentum Investments’ new underlying philosophy of outcome-based investing.
Madonsela was in truthful conversation with Carte Blanche presenter Derek Watts at the event held at the Kyalami Theatre On The Track in Johannesburg.
Speaking about her term in office as the infamous public prosecutor who stirred the state pot and her thoughts on the way forward for the country, Madonsela said, “The power of dreams is what keeps us afloat. We are a great nation and it is dreams that brought us here. Even though we are messy in the middle as South Africa, each one can do something to capture a dream and decapture the state in order to move forward.”
She added that government processes needed to be more transparent and that civil society was required to be more engaged and participate in decision making.
Momentum Investments chief executive officer Thinus Alsworth-Elvey said Madonsela had been invited because she was an inspiring example of someone who had stayed true to her course. “Our key clients and intermediaries were obviously delighted to get the chance to hear from her and to understand the relevance of her message to our investment ethos”.
Momentum Investments chief investment officer Sonja Saunderson told the audience that outcome-based investing is a game changer for local investors. “This is now the framework for managing clients’ investments and their investment journey. It means a complete overhaul of the way we understand investor needs, make investment decisions, dialogue with investors, and how we have structured our business to maximise the probability of investors achieving their investment goals. It makes the investor’s goal the only benchmark that matters.”
Saunderson believes investor behaviour is driven by behavioural biases such as greed and fear, with a focus often placed on short-term and peer investment returns, as opposed to long-term drivers creating successful outcomes for investors. The industry, in turn, is product-driven as opposed to solution-driven and it often leads to a vicious cycle of sub-optimal outcomes for investors. Outcome-based investing, she said, was “the way to a much more productive and re-assuring investor journey”.