Knowledge and Insight

Ed Smith, Rathbones asset allocation strategist, spoke at ‘Brexit and 100 days of Trump’, an event in our Liverpool office on 3 May. Here is a summary of Eds presentation.

Rathbones’ charity team is delighted to have sponsored the production of Financial governance: a gentle guide for the non-financial charity trustee, authored by Dorothy Dalton and jointly published with the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO).

To mark Mental Health Awareness Week, we explain the regulations and practices that govern how we deal with clients who are affected by dementia and other conditions that affect mental capacity.

The world is experiencing a period of rising inflation. A rebound in oil prices has helped after dragging down UK consumer price inflation into negative territory briefly in the second half of 2015. Improving wage rates in China, which in the past had been an exporter of global disinflation, have also contributed.

It is claimed that technology is changing the world at an unprecedented pace. Whether the rate of change now is greater than in the 1840s with the railways and wider Industrial Revolution is debatable, but it is certainly true that a wide range of technological developments — some incremental and some radical — are fast changing how we live.

In June 2014, we held an in-house investment conference on disruptive technologies. With insight from external speakers from technology companies, investment strategists and specialist fund managers, we considered how technology will change how we live and how these changes might affect investors. It was a fascinating day.

Personalised medicine will disrupt every part of the healthcare sector, from R&D and clinical trials, through diagnostic testing to regulation and healthcare provision (whether insurance-based or through national systems, such as the NHS). This will be driven by economics and improved medical outcomes. A key challenge will be the storage and analysis of huge quantities of patient data.

Despite alarmist media reports, the risk to most jobs from automation is low for the foreseeable future — we tend to an optimistic view of mankind’s ability to respond to technological disruption. Nonetheless, certain segments of mid-skill workers may be vulnerable and politicians will need to address the impact on standards of living.

Through advances in battery storage technology, we are on the cusp of major changes for electric vehicles and alternative energy. These are likely to be disruptive to utilities — with the ability for homes to go ‘off grid’ — and car manufacturers. Less reliance on fossil fuel consumption could have significant geopolitical implications.