Greetings and welcome to the first Custodian Edition of 2021. Our theme for this edition is Emerging Markets, Emerging Opportunities.
In February, many across the world, and especially in Asia, celebrated the Lunar New Year, welcoming the year of the Metal Ox. The Ox is an animal known for its hard work, duty and discipline – essential qualities we bring to our work with you to help you explore and embrace emerging opportunities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The year of the Metal Ox is predicted to be a transitional period, and with news of vaccines we have an increased sense of hope that 2021 will bring a change in circumstance.
We are committed to partnering with you through the transition. Partnership, collaboration and innovation have been core to the two-year multi-market implementation journey we recently completed with RBC IT&S (RBC Investor & Treasury Services). But as our first feature explains, this is just the beginning. In it, their CEO and I discuss how solutions created through collaboration can redesign the client model when you have the right partner to work with.
As a bank, we are proud to be making commitments to reduce our carbon footprint and to direct investments where they are needed most. The conversation around the role that Securities Lending can play in implementing ESG strategies is an interesting and evolving one – and we look at how individualised Securities Lending programmes can help asset holders to push their ESG goals in Balancing sustainability with profitability: ESG and Securities Lending.
Having the right partners is an equally important consideration for those with a growing ESG agenda.
From a market perspective, Asia is emerging as an investment spotlight with China increasingly looked to as a relatively attractive opportunity. As Access all areas summarises, our investor survey of 2020 showed that China is a long-term strategy for international investors and a good proportion are set to increase their allocations to Chinese assets in the next 12 months while another 12% say they will invest in China for the first time.
While Africa and the Middle East have been relatively quiet compared to Asia, the lifting of sanctions in some Middle Eastern markets create opportunities for foreign investors to enter. The conversation across Africa is a continuation of the digitisation journey and accelerated connectivity that the pandemic has brought to markets, as explored in The promise of innovation for Sub-Saharan Africa’s post-trade industry. This fits well into the broader digitisation conversation we are having with clients globally.
The connectivity, resilience and relationships made stronger in 2020 allow us to continue to support you in this year of transition, despite travel restrictions.
I look forward to conversations in the coming year on how we can leverage these emerging opportunities.
With China leading the global economic recovery, we will be keeping a close eye on the changes that its regulators are making to ease foreign access and how we can help clients to leverage these.
Margaret Harwood-Jones Co-head, Financing and Securities Services
