Case study - FEAL Data Analytics Module

Now in its thirteenth year, the Fund Executives Association Limited (FEAL) and Melbourne Business School (MBS) Masters program continues to provide executives in the superannuation a tailored course designed to help them advance to the next step of their career.

FEAL also offers members a growing number of scholarships and programs to assist them in their ongoing professional development.

Masters in Organisational Leadership

This year, the FEAL MBS Masters in Organisational Leadership will offer a unit on data analytics for the first time, in response to the changing needs of superannuation managers and leaders around using data as a tool in leadership decisions.

"This is something that the funds are really getting more and more involved with," FEAL chief executive officer, Joanna Davison told Industry Moves.

The Data Analytics course will be run by Ujwal Kayande - professor of marketing, associate dean and director of The Centre for Business Analytics at the Melbourne Business School - from 10 to 14 May 2021.

The complete Masters course includes 12 units, which each run for a week of intensive lectures and study, usually in a residential facility attached to the Melbourne Business School.

But students can also complete any four units and receive a Graduate Certificate in Organisational Leadership or any eight units and receive a Graduate Diploma in Organisational Leadership

Many also study individual units as standalone units, with some funds choosing to send the executive most appropriate to the course for an individual unit.

"It's actually not really about super it's about leadership," Davison says.

"If you're leading a team of 1000 people it doesn't really matter if they are selling widgets or selling super you have similar challenges."

Davison says that course units are receiving increasing interest from those still in financial services but outside the superannuation industry, with recent enrolments from ANZ, Link Group, and T.Rowe Price.

"I think there is still a lot of interest broadly around professional development," she says.

"The funds have really professionalised in the last 20 years [and] I think the demand for education will grow. The people who work at the funds now a lot of them are extremely qualified and a lot of them come from outside"

Mentorship initiative

FEAL also runs a structured mentorship program through which FEAL members with three to five years professional experience and expertise can be matched with members that have at least 10 to 12 years professional experience and superannuation industry experience.

"We launched that not long after I started. It's been going for about five years," Davison says.

"We use a fantastic HR professional called Rebecca Neylon. The whole program is quite structured."

Once mentees are matched up with a mentor, they need to sign a document that ensures that nobody will be poached and nobody will divulge confidential information that either party might disclose.

The program involves a monthly meeting, which shifted online during Covid, during which mentorship pairs are encouraged to discuss a topic that has been emailed beforehand by Rebecca Neylon.

Michael Dwyer Leadership Scholarship

FEAL offers a number of scholarships and two years ago, following the retirement of founding chair Michael Dwyer, launched the Michael Dwyer Leadership Scholarship.

This scholarship, sponsored by Pendal Group, allows a superannuation fund executive the opportunity to attend the Executive Colloquium at Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership, a six-day intensive program.

The program examines the history of ethics and helps executives hone their critical reasoning and ethical thinking skills and examine their own ethical frameworks.