Finnish pension insurance company Veritas has appointed Kari Vatanen as its new chief investment office, who joins from Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company.

Vatanen worked as head of cross asset derivative strategies and allocation at Varma. Prior to this he worked as a chief risk officer and a portfolio manager in Varma and as a quantitative analyst in various investment organizations.

He replaces Niina Bergring who left Veritas at the end of 2019 to take on the position of executive vice president, asset management at Aktia Bank.

Vatanen holds M.Sc. in Engineering Mathematics from Helsinki University of Technology and M.A. in Philosophy from University of Helsinki. He is a CFA Charterholder and holds the Financial Risk Manager (FRM) certification. He has been a speaker at several international quantitative investment and derivative conferences and written articles on risk management and alternative risk premia investing.

“It is hard to imagine a more exciting time than now to start working as a CIO in a pension insurance company,” Vatanen said. “Speaking of economic growth, we are in the late cycle. Behind us we have more than 10 years of rising equity market and the rates have declined to the extreme low levels. The returns of traditional asset classes have been strong for many years, but in forthcoming scenarios risks seem higher than expected returns.”

“The capital markets are already strongly supported by central banks. Growing geopolitical tensions can, when erupted, drive all the markets down at the same time. Then there are no means left to diversify the risks in the investment portfolio,” he added.

Therefore, he said in this economic environment it is valuable for institutional investors to be agile and able to update their investing beliefs.
He takes up his position on 1 March 2020.

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