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    Currency

    Currency

    Foreign currency exposure can add unwanted volatility, but also a source of alpha. Our customised currency solutions can help your strike your desired balance between hedging and seeking alpha.

    £36.7bn

    currency solutions assets under management1

    22

    members in Insight’s currency team2

    20 years

    average experience2

    3

    building blocks in Insight’s approach to currency – passive hedging, dynamic hedging and absolute returns

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    We believe that our Currency Solutions Team is one of the industry’s most experienced teams, specialising in quantitative solutions, risk management techniques and macro discretionary strategies.

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    We believe that our Currency Solutions Team is one of the industry’s most experienced teams, specialising in quantitative solutions, risk management techniques and macro discretionary strategies.

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    Francesca Fornasari, Head of Currency

    Managing currency exposure

    Foreign currency exposure can add unwanted volatility, but also a source of alpha. Our customized currency solutions can help your strike your desired balance between hedging and seeking alpha.

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    The configuration of a currency overlay portfolio is an interactive and multi-faceted process.

    Our approach is to work in partnership with our clients to define the optimal:

    • Solution design
    • Portfolio construction
    • Collateral management
    • Implementation procedure
    • Ongoing service and reporting needs

    Our approach is fully modular and ideal for designing fully customised solutions to best meet the requirements of our clients.

    Why Insight for passive investing?

    • We aim to deliver the benchmark return at minimal cost. With this goal in mind, we are particularly focussed on tracking error, liquidity risk management, counterparty risk management, operational efficiency, best execution and informative and transparent reporting
    • As a full-scale provider of currency solutions, we are able to evolve our solutions to fit our clients’ changing requirements
    • Our experience in the currency absolute return space can support our clients in setting the right level of benchmark
    • Insight has extensive experience with all underlying asset types and can accommodate nuances within a strategy
    • Insight’s reputation and market leverage helps to ensure that we can deliver competitive execution pricing for our currency clients

    Our dynamic hedging solutions seek to mitigate the adverse impact of domestic currency strength on portfolio returns, while maintaining exposure to the supportive impact of domestic currency weakness.

    In other words, we aim to introduce asymmetry in currency returns.

    Our approach to delivering a bespoke dynamic hedging solution is usually quantitative in nature, fully modular, and relies on two key components:

    • Currency Risk Management (CRM) is our core hedging engine. This component is akin to an insurance policy and serves as a tail hedge instrument to protect against adverse currency moves
    • Alternative Risk Premia (Alt Risk Premia) is our return-seeking engine and is designed to improve the expected return of the combined dynamic hedging strategy

    The optimal combination of these two components is driven by our clients’ objectives – balancing expected returns versus the need to protect against adverse currency moves.

    Our solutions can be tailored to a client’s specific asset allocation and risk tolerance while delivering against multiple goals.

    Furthermore, the breadth and depth of our expertise allows us to support our clients by providing bespoke analysis, thought leadership/white papers and market commentary.

    Our core belief is that currency markets are driven by a combination of macro-economic developments and risk premia. As such, our investment philosophy aims to cover both areas through independent alpha generation processes, namely:

    • A quantitative approach to modelling alternative risk premia
    • A macro discretionary approach to analysing macroeconomic fundamentals

    Our approach generates six independent currency alpha streams each with different characteristics and different expected behaviours. We use these differences to construct portfolios that help our clients achieve their bespoke objective.

    These can lead to purely quantitative, purely discretionary, or blended portfolios.

    Key building blocks for our approach to delivering alpha

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    For illustrative purposes only.

    30 years in currency markets

    Meet some of our team

    Insight’s currency solutions team have managed currency solutions for institutional investors since 1991. This team of 22 investment professionals, headed by Francesca Fornasari, has an average of 20 years’ industry experience.1 We believe that this makes Insight one of the most stable and experienced teams in the industry.

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    Francesca Fornasari

    Head of Currency Solutions

    Francesca Fornasari

    Head of Currency Solutions

    Francesca joined Insight in June 2019. She is responsible for the oversight of Insight’s dedicated team of currency investment professionals which provides currency solutions ranging from foreign exchange hedging to currency alpha.

    Prior to Insight, Francesca was a Senior FX and Fixed Income Portfolio Manager at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM). She started her career at The World Bank in Washington then spent time as an FX strategist at both Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, before joining GSAM in 2006.

    She graduated from the Universite’ de Geneve in Switzerland with a degree in Monetary and Financial Economics. She also holds a Masters and PhD in Economics from Georgetown University in the US.

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    James Coleman

    Head of Research, Quantitative Strategies, Currency Solutions

    James Coleman

    Head of Research, Quantitative Strategies, Currency Solutions

    James joined Insight in January 2013 following the acquisition of Pareto. He is a key member of the Research Team providing ongoing support and development for the currency risk management product, currency alpha products as well as research and client support for the Asia-Pacific region. James originally joined the Research Team at Pareto in June 1996 after two years with Westpac Investment Management in Sydney where he headed the development of a quantitative tactical asset allocation product. Prior to entering the financial industry, James was a research scientist working in electro-optical and communications in the Australian defence industry from 1989 to 1994. He has published articles in the fields of queuing theory and optical filter design. James graduated from the University of Adelaide, South Australia with a Bachelor of Maths Science degree (with honours). He also holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics.

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    Mark Dragten

    Head of Discretionary FX, Currency Solutions

    Mark Dragten

    Head of Discretionary FX, Currency Solutions

    Mark is Head of Discretionary FX within Insight’s Currency Solutions team, focussing on the discretionary currency alpha strategy. Mark initially joined Insight in September 2021 as a Senior Portfolio Manager and, prior to this, spent 15 years as a portfolio manager at Capula Investment Management, Element Capital Partners and GAM. Mark’s financial career started in 1999, first in New York then later Zurich in foreign exchange sales for Julius Baer. Mark holds a BA in Business Studies from the University of Stirling and the Investment Management Certificate from the CFA Society of the UK.

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    Anton Ponomarev, CFA

    Head of Engineering, Quantitative Strategies, Currency Solutions

    Anton Ponomarev, CFA

    Head of Engineering, Quantitative Strategies, Currency Solutions

    Anton joined Insight in January 2013, following the acquisition of Pareto where he worked as a quantitative researcher. Anton is responsible for overseeing the development and implementation of all proprietary investment strategies and the associated technology in the Currency Solutions business. He plays an instrumental role in the design of tailored solutions for Insight’s clients and acts as a critical link between investment and technology teams. Anton graduated from University of Cambridge with MA in Mathematics and he also holds MSc in Financial Mathematics from CASS Business School. He holds the Investment Management Certificate from the CFA Society of the UK and is also a CFA charterholder.

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    Richard Purssell

    Head of Currency Trading

    Richard Purssell

    Head of Currency Trading

    Richard joined Insight in January 2013 following the acquisition of Pareto. He is Head of Currency Trading with specific responsibility for the implementation and trading of the currency strategy. He originally joined Pareto in 1998 after spending ten years at Hambros Bank Limited, where he was responsible for the Treasury Services Team. Richard sits on the Bank of England Foreign Exchange Joint Standing Committee. He graduated from Bristol University with a BSc in Economics.

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    Matt Badowski, CFA

    Co-Head Quantitative Portfolio Management, Currency Solutions

    Matt Badowski, CFA

    Co-Head Quantitative Portfolio Management, Currency Solutions

    Following the acquisition of Pareto, Matt joined Insight in January 2013 and is a Co-Head of Quantitative Portfolio Management in Currency Solutions. Matt initially joined Pareto in July 2012 with principle focus on currency overlay and risk management strategies. His primary responsibilities include the oversight of the Quantitative Portfolio Management team, alongside daily management and implementation of the full range of Insight’s quantitative currency strategies and solutions design. Matt holds a BSc (Hons) in Physics from Durham University, an Executive MBA (Hons) from Quantic School of Business and Technology, the Investment Management Certificate from the CFA Society of the UK and is also a CFA charterholder.

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    Erin Musli, CFA

    Co-Head Quantitative Portfolio Management, Currency Solutions

    Erin Musli, CFA

    Co-Head Quantitative Portfolio Management, Currency Solutions

    Following the acquisition of Pareto, Erin joined Insight in January 2013 and is Co-Head of Quantitative Portfolio Management in the Currency Solutions team. His responsibilities include the design, implementation and portfolio management of currency solutions. He has extensive expertise in risk management and contributes to research for the ongoing development of our currency strategies. Prior to Pareto, Erin was a Financial Analyst at Telstra International. Erin holds a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and Computer Science from King’s College, University of London and he also holds an MSc in Finance and Investments from CASS Business School. Erin holds the Investment Management Certificate from the CFA Society of the UK and is a CFA charterholder.

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