Volunteer Story - Natalie Gregoire-Skeete

Natalie Gregoire-Skeete, CFA, FRM
Senior Manager ESG Sustainability, EY Financial Services Consultancy

 

Volunteer Group: Assessment of Value working group
This group reviewed over 100 Assessment of Value statement reports in their first year of publication and made recommendations for fund managers and the FCA as to how to make these reports more useful in the future.

What specific knowledge and skills did you bring to support the Value Assessment Working Group?
I have had a wide ranging career, beginning as an Investment Analyst covering Japanese and European Equities later moving to supporting our largest global financial firms on regulatory implementation which gave a me broad perspective as a practitioner. Throughout my career I have focused on social impact, this could be how a new product may impact customers decisions and therefore a firms stock price, how people understand the products they investment in, or how different members of society are impacted by banking regulation or practices. The Assessment of Value document is a publicly available document to help investors with their investment decisions.

What have you learnt from your volunteer peers?
I experienced the joy of working on a piece of research principally for the goal of improving our industry and society. I was surprised at how incredibly well our group worked together. We were able to draw upon our different experiences from different firms and approaches. I learnt how to distil data and present it in a manner that is consumable by people across the industry

Why was writing this paper important for the industry?
This paper was the first review of the existing population of Assessment of Value reports. It provided insight into these documents designed to help end investors to make fund choices. We created a methodology to review the documents and used a quantitative analytic approach in our review, which resulted the most in-depth analysis that had been conducted in this area. The paper provided insight into the properties of these Assessment of Value reports, we identified areas where the reports were providing additional clarity and suggested areas for improvement.  The research was very well received by industry receiving media coverage in the Times, FT and more.