The Singapore wealth management industry will soon hear more of, and from billionaire investor Ray Dalio, whose Bridgewater Associates is one of the world’s largest hedge funds.
On Oct 21, the Wealth Management Institute, set up to train people for the industry, announced a US$25 million grant from Dalio’s philanthropic arm that will be used to launch the Dalio Sustainable Market Principles Program, aimed at training investment professionals and policymakers on universal principles of market behaviour.
In addition, Dalio will also become chairman of WMI’s advisory board for the programme, and be active in shaping the curriculum. WMI’s chairman emeritus, Ng Kok Song, former group chief investment officer of GIC and said to be a close friend of Dalio, will also be on the board. Lim Chow Kiat, CEO of GIC, will be on this board too. The programme is slated to start in 2021.
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“I have known Singapore for many decades and have had the privilege of seeing this country develop into a globally-admired example of wise governance and management of public investments,” says Dalio.
“Through this initiative with WMI, my family and I hope we can contribute to Singapore’s continued development and enhance the level of investment knowledge and expertise throughout the region,” he adds.
GIC’s Lim, who is concurrently WMI’s chairman, describes this partnership with Dalio as being strongly aligned with WMI’s practice-based curriculum and will enable investment managers and policymakers in Singapore and the region to hone fundamental skills.
Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore hails the Dalio programme as having “every promise of being truly transformative”.
Dr Beh Swan Gin, chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board, says the partnership will help address the need for more and better “stewards of financial capital” in this region.
WMI’s active association with Dalio stretches back to more than a decade, when course participants were hosted at Bridgewater as part of their programme. In 2016, Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer visited WMI and taught.
Dalio himself, according to WMI’s CEO Foo Mee Har, was supposed to visit Singapore and be hosted by WMI – if not for the outbreak of Covid-19.
She notes that Dalio is famed for his very systematic and extensive research into timeless and universal principles of how economies and capital markets work over long historical cycles, stretching back to the Roman times.
By doing so, Dalio has generated deep insights that can be applied to real world investments and other types of decision making, says Foo.
“He talks about systematic investments. He looks at his variables, he tests them, and writes them down and he keeps reiterating them. He talks about the ‘machine’ and perfecting the ‘machine’ – that’s his signature, that’s his style,” says Foo in an interview with The Edge Singapore.
However, Foo sees value in applying Dalio’s approach to beyond the wealth management and asset management activities but also policymakers weighing funding decisions. “They are all interlinked, social, economic and returns on your funding,” she explains.
WMI was set up in 2003 by GIC and Temasek Holdings to help develop a bigger pool of talent for the wealth management industry which Singapore was actively pushing. Last year, WMI trained some 17,000 finance professionals sent by 110 financial institutions from 23 countries.
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“We teach financial professionals, so the pedagogy has to be absolutely anchored to the industry, is cutting edge, and has a practical understanding of how markets work,” says Foo.
With Dalio’s involvement, Foo is looking forward to a boost to what WMI can bring to the table.
“He has many lenses to offer: his knowledge base of insights, expertise on economics and investment, his strong principles about leadership, and radical transparency – that’s because he has done so much work with world leaders and is a great spokesperson of geopolitics and development of markets as well,” she adds.
