Business School students launch Student Investment Fund

Earlier this year, the Imperial College Business School officially launched the Student Investment Fund – a student-led fund, responsible for managing £100,000 in assets, open to students of the Business School with an interest in developing their skills in investing. We sat down with the Fund’s Executive Committee to talk about how it all came about:

How did the Fund come about? Was it a student-led initiative?

The Fund came about when several students on the MSc Investment & Wealth Management and MSc Finance & Accounting programmes identified the need for a forum in which students could practically apply what they were learning in the classroom. It was wholly student-run, but has been strongly supported by both the Business School and the central College.

What were some of the challenges faced in establishing the Fund?

There were a number of key challenges we faced in setting it up. Raising the funds took considerable time and effort, with multiple pitches and proposals to convince the Endowment Board to give us £100,000. The Business School were keen to ensure the project would be an ongoing complement to their curriculum, and would allow students to put their Imperial-learned skills into practice. As such, we spent a lot of our time designing the Fund as an ongoing part of the Business School’s – and hopefully, later, the College’s – offering.

In order to get students interested, as well as attracting further funding from external sources, we needed to establish the Fund as a credible initiative that would increase student employability, their practical skills, and their exposure to the buy-side industry. The Executive Team met with countless industry professionals to build our network, with some of these professionals running training sessions in the future: for example, we had one last month run by Ryan Shea, Head of Research at Amareos, on bridging the gap between classroom learning and best practice in the asset management world.

How is this Fund different to other finance societies at Imperial?

Our Fund is different, because it combines both fundamental and quantitative investment strategies. As far as we are aware, we are the only student-led investment fund that runs quantitative investment strategies. We’re also partnering with key industry firms, such as Fidelity, to form specialised training programmes for our analysts. In addition, we are working with a start-up, QIARK, which allows us to make democratic investment decisions between a theoretically infinite group of analysts. This could, in theory, allow us to open up the Fund to the entire College in the future.

How exactly does the Fund work?

The Fund is run by an Executive Team of six MSc Investment & Wealth Management students, an MSc Finance & Accounting student, and an MSc Strategic Marketing student. It is also overseen by an Investment Committee from the Business School, which ensures we’re complying with previously-agreed requirements and risk controls. We also have an Advisory Board, which is made up of several industry professionals, from companies like JP Morgan Asset Management, Aviva Investors, and Tikehau Capital. The Advisory Board guides us, offering expert advice as we make our trades. Having the support of key management personnel who are currently working in industry has been invaluable in fine-tuning our investment strategies.

We run two types of strategies: a discretionary strategy, based on fundamental analysis, and quantitative strategies, based on algorithms. The investment is divided between these two in a 30:70 ratio. We want to showcase Imperial’s unique value proposition – that of a technologically-innovative university – in the type of investing we do. As such, our quantitative strategies are allocated a larger proportion of the available funding. Any profits from the fund are reinvested for future use.

Who can get involved with the Fund?

At the moment, any Business School students with an interest in investing, or who want to learn more, can apply. Students can apply to either be an equity analyst or a member. Equity analysts produce tear sheets, which they use to present their ideas for new investments at our frequent stock pitches. If approved, the tear sheet forms the basis for a proper equity research report. The ones that are approved by the Executive Team are implemented within the portfolio.

Membership alone requires no formal time commitment – students may just enjoy coming along to the stock pitches, events, or hearing from our partners and speakers. The Fund is also designed to be a networking tool for those interested in becoming analysts in the buy-side industry, hence our use of industry networks to deliver training programmes.

The students we are looking for have a real passion for research and investment management, a systematic and methodical way of thinking, and an analytical mind-set. They should also really enjoy in-depth company analysis. While we’re only open to Business School students currently, we hope to open the Fund up to the wider student body as soon as possible.

If you would like to join the Fund, please email your expression of interest to investfund@ic.ac.uk