The risk management tool will be used to teach Liability Driven Investment on Cass Business School’s Masters courses.

Cass Business School, City University London, has formed a relationship with financial technology provider, RiskFirst, which will see it use risk management platform, PFaroe, to teach Liability-Driven Investment (LDI) on its Masters courses.

Matthew Seymour, Managing Director of RiskFirst, said:

“It is extremely pleasing to have Cass, a world-renown business school and an independent party in the pensions and investment industry, recognise PFaroe as a tool that is fundamentally necessary for the management of LDI de-risking solutions. What is more, the fact that the next generation of LDI managers will be familiar with PFaroe will further cement its place as the industry standard benchmark for risk management technology.”

PFaroe will be used as a practical tool on the business school’s fixed income module, which is taught across its 19 Masters courses. Students will use PFaroe’s analytics to structure a LDI de-risking solution for defined benefit pension schemes, with the aim being to introduce students to all the concepts and tools necessary to enable them to understand the problems involved in managing a fixed income portfolio.

Andrew Clare, Professor of Asset Management at Cass Business School, said:

“We have always seen our role as to serve the needs of London’s companies, and in the investment management space these are rapidly changing. Investment management firms, asset managers and pensions schemes are crying out for talent that has a firm grasp of the nuances of implementing LDI hedges, as well as well as an understanding of the industry-standard tools, such as PFaroe. By allowing our students to use PFaroe to test solutions on a modelled up pension fund, we move from theory to practice, enriching their learning and equipping them with the skills to succeed in a changing marketplace.”

Professor Clare previously spent three years working as the Financial Economist for Legal and General Investment Management (LGIM), where he was responsible for the group’s investment process and where he began the development of LGIM’s initial LDI offering. Clare also serves on the investment committee of the £4 billion GEC Marconi pension plan and is a trustee and Chairman of the Investment Committee of the £3 billion Magnox Electric Group pension scheme.

Cass Business School, which is part of City University London, delivers innovative, relevant and forward-looking education, consultancy and research.

Cass is located in the heart of one of the world’s leading financial centres.  It has strong links to both the City of London and its corporate, financial and professional service firms, as well as to the thriving entrepreneurial hub of Tech City – located close to the School.

Cass MBA, specialist Masters and undergraduate degrees have a global reputation for excellence and the School supports nearly 100 PhD students.

Cass offers one of the widest portfolio of specialist Masters programmes in Europe.  It also has the largest faculties of Finance and Actuarial Science and Insurance in the region.

The Research Excellence Framework 2014 rated 84% of Cass Business and Management research as being of world-leading (4 star) or internationally excellent (3 star) quality and placed Cass in the top six in the UK. As examples of recent independent rankings of its research, Cass is ranked third in Europe for its finance research; second in Europe and eleventh in the world for banking research; and first in Europe and second in the world for actuarial science research.

Cass is a place where students, academics, industry experts, business leaders and policy makers can enrich each other’s thinking. www.cass.city.ac.uk  @Cassinthenews