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Impact Investing & Cryptocurrency in Developing Nations | YIGC with Christina Hobbs

HOSTS Maddy Guest & Sophie Dicker|21 September, 2021

Investing is an important way to grow your wealth and set yourself up for financial freedom. But it doesn’t have to stop there. It can also be a tool to give back to causes that you care about. Ever thought that you could micro finance women’s businesses or fund farms that are trying to grow sustainable agriculture practices? Well, it is all possible through impact investing. On today’s episode, we chatted with our first CEO, Christina Hobbs from Verve Super, Australi’a first superfund for women, all about impact investing and the use case for cryptocurrency in developing nations. This conversation is full of experience and perspective as Christina worked with the UN for over ten years where she led or coordinated humanitarian organisations, governments, and the private sector to connect the most vulnerable people in the world to the financial services system. Christina is an advocate for building the financial power of women and is passionate about doing so through impact investing and ensuring that capital is being used to create a better world.

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Maddy: [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to your in good company and investing, striving to disrupt the norms in the finance industry. I'm Maddy and as always, I'm in very good company with my co-host, Sophie. Hello, Maddy. How good. How are 

Sophie: [00:00:21] you? I'm so excited for today's episode of Season two. But before we get into today's episode, we would like to acknowledge and pay respects the wonder people of the Coolen nation who are the traditional owners of this land. We pay our deepest respects to the elders past and present and to the next generation who we hope to create a different future for. 

Maddy: [00:00:40] So today is a very momentous day because we are welcoming on our first CEO of the Year in Good Company series, Christina Hobbs's from Verve Super. 

Sophie: [00:00:50] Oh my gosh. I'll first say what an achievement momentous. This is such a big word. But maybe it's not just the Candace. 

Maddy: [00:00:58] I mean, I think it's deserving of the occasion. 

Sophie: [00:01:01] No, definitely. And Christina literally is the most fascinating chat. We speak about all her time working at the UN, which I personally found really fascinating. And we spoke about impact investing. Like I'm one of the coolest things she talks about is how you can give back. You know, she speaks about micro financing for women through investing 

Maddy: [00:01:20] and for the first time. Also this series, we are going to discuss Bitcoin. And Cristiana has such an interesting perspective on the use case for Bitcoin in developing nations. So very excited for that. 

Sophie: [00:01:33] And I feel like we learnt a lot in this one because both you and I still have a bit of learning to do in the crypto space, and I loved her perspective on it. 

Maddy: [00:01:41] So let's get into today's session today. We're chatting with Christina, the CEO and founder of Australia's first super fund for Women, before starting her business, Christina and worked at the UN for over ten years, where she led all coordinated humanitarian organisations, governments and the private sector to connect the most vulnerable people in the world to the financial system. Christina is an advocate for building the financial power of women and is passionate about doing so through impact, investing and ensuring that capital is being used to create a better world. Welcome, Christina.

Christina Hobbs: [00:02:18] Thanks for having me on. 

Sophie: [00:02:20] Christina was so excited to be chatting with you today. But before we jump into some of our topics, we are going to ask you a couple of questions. The first being, what is your morning routine if you have one? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:02:32] My morning routine is terrible. I'm not a morning person at all. And I'm actually writing a book on sleep, which assures me that this is genetic and not just that, like, I'm really lazy getting up in the morning. So, yeah, I'm sort of like someone that kind of rolls out of bed like 10 to 15 minutes before my first meeting or thing I have to be at and quickly grab something to eat at my desk while I'm starting. So terrible, terrible morning routine. But as a result, I try to have a really nice lunch routine. 

Sophie: [00:03:02] I come up and say, 

Christina Hobbs: [00:03:04] eat lunch, go for a walk, do all the things. But yeah, I'm like part of my morning routine that's really set in starting there is I don't really put any meetings where I have to think about things. Before about 10 a.m. I've really been caught out in the past having to like, you know, think through things for that time in the morning and it doesn't work.

Maddy: [00:03:25] Well, I love it. And Christina, who what influenced you to invest?

Christina Hobbs: [00:03:30] Oh, that's a great question. I'll actually give it to my to my mum for that one. So I was one of those kids that had like a paper on and their first job at about a dollar, 19 hour, you know, cycling really hard, delivering papers. And I was such a saver. Like I had a fear of like spending any money because, like, I was working so hard for, like, every cent. So I actually had saved something like five from Dollars the time I was fourteen. Wow. Yeah. Which was like back in the day. That was quite an achievement, you know, that was like Ren pocket money was about fifty cents a week kind of thing. So and with this money I'm actually convince me to go out with her and buy some Northern Territory railway bonds. So that was the place I owned at about the age of 14. So we actually as bond, we provided money to the Northern Territory government to build a railway line. And about five years later, I got back. I would have been for the last one hundred dollars. So that I guess that, like, there was two like good lessons about that. Like one was like if you have a pay phone, when did you actually spend your money? So it's always meant a lot to me. But know like five years later the value that money wasn't so much once I had like a job at a fish and chip shop. But I think it was also this amazing lesson, because I do remember even when I got back that money and I think it was something like my initial deposit plus maybe fifty or sixty dollars or seventy dollars. Like even at that time I remember like seventy dollars I didn't have to work for. Or like six Dollars, 80 and alwa like that was like, amazing. So I think that was a really good, really good lesson that kind of got me on my way really, really early on. 

Sophie: [00:05:10] It's also money that you kind of forget about, like it's gone. And then you get this interest back and you're like, oh, I didn't have to do much for that. That was great. Don't do that again. Exactly. So our final question is, if you were a stock or a company, who would you be and why? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:05:25] So probably one that I invest in, which is just if it's ethical. ATFP So I would say I would be the stock because there's a lot of things that's quite diversified, which is good. And the way it works is it sets an ethical sustainability, ladies. So it's not necessarily looking for the very sustainable companies in the world and investing in that sort of like in each category, who's really trying hard or, you know, who's doing their best. And I think when it comes to sustainability and ethics, that probably some that may well as well. I'm just doing my best in all the categories. 

Maddy: [00:06:06] Well, I think 

Christina Hobbs: [00:06:07] it's not perfect. 

Sophie: [00:06:08] But you're recycling, doing compost. 

Maddy: [00:06:13] Well, I think that leads us pretty beautifully into our next question, actually, because you do have a seriously incredible career so far. And I'm very in admiration of all that you've done. But if you could, I guess, share with our listeners a little bit, what is the back story of sort of where you are today and how did you come to be the CEO of a superannuation company? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:06:35] Yeah, I'll try to give you one. I've seen my LinkedIn. It's quite it's quite long, but. Yeah. So I started my career at Deloitte as a management consultant for a couple of years, working mostly with other financial service companies like really loved that kind of big for environment. Yeah, I just thought that the culture was excellent, but just sort of like one day it really hit me. These Slive working really long hours and just kind of like diverting all my energy and mental space to just kind of helping banks make more money. And I just really started to struggle with motivation. And, yeah, just just really wasn't working out. And so I decided to tell you what was going to be a year off at that point and got a government funded position with the UN. So working overseas as an economist and I moved to Kathmandu, Nepal, and at the time I thought, oh, is a really long period of time and can I lost a whole year and I always imagined I'd be back back in Australia and back in Sydney kind of in 12 months and have had a good experience, but ended up kind of completely shifting my career and then spending about 15 years overseas. Working with the UN at is really exciting time when the entire humanitarian sector was shifting from giving people like blankets or food or water or housing or whatever in emergencies and even in developing situations to saying, look, if markets could function and if there are functioning markets or how can we actually support local markets for giving people cash? And the UN agency I work for, the World Food Programme, it was actually largest humanitarian organisation in the world, but it was full of logisticians. So it was full of like these men that were like fantastic at getting trucks across like three different rivers with broken bridges, a lot like four different conflict lines. But like, you know, in senior management, say, can you start setting up some banking systems like people that are going to be banked in areas where there are no banks? It wasn't the right skill set. So people were like, I used to work in finance. You try during these obviously like quite different areas of finance. But I got all my way through and then ended up in these crazy career, ended up working in, you know, in active conflict settings and in some of the after the natural disasters the last 10 years. So really a different career trajectory. And then, yeah, probably about four years ago, I decided it was time to come home and I'd been really inspired by some of the work that I was doing, more development context around macro investing in micro financing and trying to look at the big picture of like ethical funds. And how do we get fund money into some of these other smaller funds for these kind of projects? And in one way or another, that sort of brought me to superannuation. I think around the same time that, you know, I realised a lot of my friends was wanting to outsource their financial management to their partners. For whatever reason. A lot of people, my friends were coming to me for financial advice and got said, you know, I guess I just sort of realised that this was all these factors. I think women retiring. Let's give the news, the banking royal commission, the lack of ethics within the news. And, yeah, it just seemed the right time to start a superannuation fund for women and really focussing it on supporting women to learn how to build wealth while also having these kind of. Ethical approach in looking at how we can use money a bit differently. So that was my third big career change.

Sophie: [00:10:06] It's so fascinating. Both Marty and I did international relations, international development at uni. So I feel like we could speak about your time with the UN forever. And our next question was going to be, what led you to create a product specifically for women? But I think you answered it nicely. That's just through your experiences and through what you saw. You felt like there was potentially a gap in the market for an investment platform more focussed towards women. 

Christina Hobbs: [00:10:31] Yeah, definitely. And I think it's just, you know, I think it was I've seen both sides of the coin on that. But I there's these women in Australia hold more than a trillion dollars in superannuation. So that's typically typically involved in the investment decisions. We're involved in setting up the companies now invest that money. So there was this huge opportunity of how can we actually use this money to support women and know more sustainable and more sustainable society? But then, yeah, I think it was really the other side as well as what what would it look like to actually design something from the ground up that's really supportive and really tailored for women? And that was quite a fun, fun thing to work on. 

Maddy: [00:11:12] So could you talk a lot about, I guess, sort of investing for good and for things that align with your values and values of sort of society more generally? Can you give us a really quick rundown of what actually is impact investing?

Christina Hobbs: [00:11:26] Yeah, that's a good question. So I sort of like two terms that get thrown around a lot. So one is impact investing and one is ethical investing, and sometimes I get used interchangeably as well. So ethical investing is is where need 10 is when you sort of it tends to be more screen based or it's investing in line with your values, really. And one really good thing to know about this is that there's no standard terminology. So for instance, I've reviewed some of the other other super fun products that are called Responsable Green and they're invest. They could be investing in things like weapons, fossil fuels, like someone that I've even looked at. And I'm like, what if like what is the responsible thing? You know, like how what is the social like what? So there's no kind of standardised terminology, I think is one really interesting aspect to that. But, you know, if you look at the truly ethical funds that call themselves truly ethical and very transparent about investing, they tend to on the home page within a couple of pages, be able to tell you what they're screening in and out. And so that kind of tends to be decisions like like stay with us. For instance, we don't invest in fossil fuels or companies that finance new fossil fuel development. So that's pretty simple. We don't invest in BHP Billiton or so there's always kind of screens that go on. And then on the impact investing side, that terminology more generally refers to actually looking for opportunities that drive impact. So, for instance, where like and Netflix might make it through an ethical fund, like because they're not really committing any major human rights abuses or crimes against humanity, they they don't really also generating a positive impact. So an example of like a positive impact, one that we're investing in. For instance, going back to microfinance is a fund called the Vision Fund. It's a microfinance fund that actually provides micro loans to women in developing low income countries. And it's backed by an NGO. So the NGO wraps around all the business support and those are the things to ensure that the businesses are really well placed to succeed and then our members money to actually use the financing. And then it's a very steady rate of return on that investment because the loans have been shown over a long period of time to be repaid back at over 90 percent. So instead of, you know, when we look at superannuation, we try to have a really mixed portfolio of some risky high growth investments and then some more stable investments. So these are just like a really interesting, exciting example of like, you know, instead of investing in the Northern Territory railway line, taking that money and investing in something that is actually secure with a higher or similar return, but is actually driving a really positive impact. 

Sophie: [00:14:14] Yeah, well, you said the impact investing can be kind of a hard space to navigate. You said there's a couple of different words that are used interchangeably. And we've also spoken about this on our sustainability episode as well. But we wanted to ask you for someone who does have an impact investing philosophy, how can they be sure of their investments? How can they be sure that they are impact investments? Like what kind of information can we be trusting? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:14:38] Yeah, this is a great question. And I think the answer is actually pretty simple, that funds that are doing this well are really proud of this story on this. So if you go to our Web page, I think it's on the home page. It's very it's very easy to find. We say we invest in if we don't invest in this. And here's some of our great impact investments and from the. You can click through and actually say a list of every single company, and so often we'll get people writing to us and they'll say, I don't want to be invested in X, Y, Z, and we'll decide, OK? But either way, I have to say to people like you really understand your views on the spot. We don't agree for these reasons or we can't do that for these reasons. These are our screens or we say we agree with you. We totally agree with that philosophy here is for investment. Let's take a look at it. Tell us if there's something he'd take objection to. You can compare that to other options or other funds that could potentially be using those words in your name. But you could dig around on the website for half an hour and you wouldn't actually find what they say they are investing or not investing in and investment least. And I've actually had people who joined our fund who have told me that it actually took them over three months to get information from their super fund about what they were and weren't invested in. So I tend to say the funds that are really leading the way on this are really proud about this story and will want to tell you and you can find that information really easily. And the other ones will try to be Hoddinott and man, you've got to be like you've really got to like, look at the detail, because I actually saw one a few weeks ago that was talked about sustainability and environment and climate. And then it was talking about how they're not investing in Australian companies, are investing in fossil fuels. But I look to their investment and they had a whole lot of global stocks that were doing like even tricky things like that where I'm like, oh, like, you know, if you read that quickly or you're really looking at word by word, you could you could be fooled. So, yeah, it is an interesting space. And I think it will be interesting to see, like from a regulatory perspective over the next five years as some kind of norms developed around this. 

Maddy: [00:16:45] Yeah, I think that's really interesting. I think there's got to be some kind of regulation coming in around this area and maybe around the Thames and things like that. So we'll have to wait and see. So but I think throughout history, you know, we think about giving to good causes and that has historically been sort of philanthropically and through giving donations and things like this. And now when we think about impact investing, I guess I'm really interested to know what are your thoughts on whether this leads to lower returns or whether we can still be getting those sort of high returns we would be getting by investing in anything else? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:17:20] Yeah, I think it's really exciting time for ethical investing in general in this regard, because I think the last sort of 20 years ago or 15 years ago when they started as a concept, I think it was really unknown. But now there's just so much great research. If we look so from Australia, so from the Responsible Investment Association, you can have a look at some of their reports. There's great report from the US out of Harvard. There's great reports out of the UK in Europe from Oxford. And basically like what the research is showing in Australia and globally is that the funds that are actually ethically screening properly, not just the ones that are doing it by name, are actually or have actually shown to outperform over the short, medium and long term. So that's that's true in Australia and and internationally. So it's a really great news. And it's a story we have to get out of the time because we often get like one of the biggest questions is people like, how much more is this going to cost me? But I think that's really interesting about that, is that that's done despite ethical funds having generally they won't have the lowest fees. So there's no reason that any fund should have high fees. But if you look at ethical funds, typically see sort of, you know, a little bit below the media and around the media, and that's because of the cost of doing that screening work. So there is actually a human cost of people going through and it's in quite a detailed level. So when you think at the for instance, we we brought in a whole load of gender indicators that we look at that that range from things like how many women in leadership to do, they do pay equality reporting. And so when you think about the amount of work that's required to kind of go through every company and screen, it doesn't meet all these criteria. It is a bit of work. But the reason that these funds are driving higher returns is that by the time you make the decision to invest your investment, time actually really, really knows that that company. And it is really interesting because obviously there's a lot of debate just generally about growth in managed funds or index funds. And there's obviously a huge amount of investment advisers to really leaning towards the lowest cost index fund. You can possibly find that ethical investing seems to be this interesting, I guess this interesting example of where a managed fund so fund that is or is based on a it could be an index based ethical fund, but a fund that is based on a greater level of screening is actually outperforming. So, yeah, I think it's a really I think there's just great research online and I really encourage people to to go and have a look. But it is important to think about it in the context of fees, because I think one of the things that concerns me a little bit in. Australia is that so many of the sort of financial creatures or financial thought leaders out there have really focussed on faith, which is great because faith is really important and they're a real indicator of success. But I think the next step that's really important is teaching Australians how to read performance. And what really concerns me is that I saw a while ago from our name, the person but one sort of financial thought leader where they recommended the top 10 ethical funds that I don't think was even super funds and that all they'd done was found the cheapest funds. But unfortunately, those 10 cheapest funds weren't really, truly ethical funds. And the performance of those funds has actually been really, really poor. So I think it's a really important lesson that anyone should start looking at, trying to understand how to read performance and understand performance in the context of risk as well. But definitely an exciting time. People that want to invest ethically, knowing that there's really no reason to compromise performance anymore. 

Sophie: [00:20:54] Well, I hopefully we're helping people towards that goal of being able to read performance a little better. And I think it's that toss up that a lot of millennials are going through these days is, you know, you're paying more often for environmentally sound choices. And that's, you know, people are usually going for the environmentally sound choice, even if it does cost us more. So I think it's really a trend that's accelerating. 

Christina Hobbs: [00:21:17] Yeah. And I kind of think about it like, you know, it's almost like just buying a piece of cloth. Yeah. You can go to Fast Fashion Place and buy a T-shirt for four dollars. You probably weren't lost my last year. Ethical investing, sort of like buying a quality product where it might cost a bit longer, might cost a bit more because, you know, the data showing that in general that they are performing. 

Maddy: [00:21:40] We are going to take a quick break for our sponsors and we will be right back to chat cryptocurrency with Christina. 

Sophie: [00:21:48] So, Christina, we want to chat to you about a topic that we haven't really gone into thus far on the podcast, and this is crypto. So we have some business icons like Charlie Munger has called Bitcoin rat poison. And then we have someone like the Twitter and Square CEO, Jack Dorsey, who said that it could bring world peace. But before we kind of jump into, you know, how this relates to your experience working in developing countries and in finance, we want to know what is your best layman's terms definition for cryptocurrency? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:22:19] OK, so I did get a slide question, so I did think about it. But I actually really like the Oxford Dictionary definition of Wikipedia for a simple one, high definition. So a digital currency, which transactions are verified and records maintained by a decentralised system using cryptography rather than a centralised authority. So I really like that because I thought it was short and clear. And I think that's what really is at the heart of it. It's something that is managed, decentralised rather than one central by one central authority, right? 

Maddy: [00:22:53] Yeah, well, I think it's pretty safe to say that crypto has been pretty topical as of late. You've had a lot of experience, I guess, sort of working in finance and in developing countries, in particular with your micro financing experience and things like that. Recently we've seen El Salvador adopt Bitcoin as its legal tender. So I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on what is the use case for crypto in developing nations. 

Christina Hobbs: [00:23:19] Yeah, I thought that El Salvador was quite interesting or I going to my theories on into that. Yeah, I think it's really interesting worldspace I don't know, but I have seen some really interesting applications of it. So we were actually using actually technology a number of times for providing assistance, particularly in conflict settings. So and this kind of gives you an idea about what the challenges that people in developing countries face and why this kind of technology could really play a really great role. So imagine a conflict setting. A lot of these people that have fled from that saying they might be within a country that might be within their country is internally displaced people or refugees in a neighbouring country. Some of those people may never have been banked. So they they may never have been into a formal banking system before. A lot of those people won't have any ID. So whether these in a conflict setting or even a development setting outside of the developed world, there's huge numbers of people that just don't have identity cards. So countries like Bangladesh and India, there's just millions and millions of people that through all these loopholes, never ended up getting a birth certificate. And in a lot of those countries, you can it's been fine. You haven't actually needed to to be registered identify person. But now is banking is becoming more important. It's these people can't be banked. So you can't have all these different situations. And then in a situation where I was working, which was in conflict settings, you've also got the problem where so for instance, I worked in on the Syria refugee response and I imagine the biggest donor at the time was the EU and they donated to the project. I'm working on a billion euros to provide assistance to Syrian refugees, and that was Syrians coming to Turkey. Now, imagine being the EU the absolute biggest nightmare. Fear is that that money is going to end up in the hands of militia back in Syria and that that's going to end up on the front page of the BBC. Yeah. So Block Chain provided this opportunity to solve all these issues for us, like it allowed us to transfer money to people that didn't have didn't necessarily have the know your customer kind of level of idei that you would need to use a formal banking system. It was a really cheap way of transferring money and it provided the accountability and that kind of level of visibility to donors to be able to transfer that money. So I've already seen it being applied in an actual context where it was really helpful. And then I think there's some other just some other trends or factors in low income countries where it just does provide this real opportunity. I think obviously I said the issue of people not being banks, not having IDs, you often say, you know, the high cost of money transfers, so particularly migrant workers. So when I lived in Kathmandu, the average salary in Nepal, I think at the time was like four or five hundred dollars a year. So imagine. And then you had those areas in the hills, in the mountains where you're going in a big no, not at all, because they'd all gone to the Middle East to work, building and transferring money back through Western new money transfer systems and losing huge amounts of money. So there's definitely these, like opportunities around like money transfer, which is like still an expensive thing to do for people that really don't have a lot of money, banditti, transactions. People don't have the same level identity. So there are some really interesting problems. But I think that cryptocurrency can potentially soulful. 

Sophie: [00:26:46] Yeah, actually Ren. Today, I was reading an article about Krypto, and it was saying that if you want to invest in crypto like in a social sense, to be looking for platforms that provide really low fees so that those platforms can become popular, and it means that in developing nations they might be used more widely. So therefore, you're kind of promoting a platform that does have those low fees to transfer money for people who can't really afford it. 

Christina Hobbs: [00:27:10] Yeah, and they're probably the ones that could potentially be picked out by those countries where people don't have high incomes. And we talk about low balances, but something like India, like the market size, there is like, you know, if a crypto takes off that you can get hundreds of millions of people on it. So but, you know, I think one of the other one of the issues that makes people really hot is the volatility in the pricing. So that volatility for people, you know, you and I is not as much of an issue. But if you're on a really, really, really, really low dollar amounts, then any form of volatility is really challenging. 

Maddy: [00:27:43] It's a lot I guess it sounds like there could be some pretty amazing benefits to come out of this sort of technology. Does that mean that there is some merit as a potential investment for people like us? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:27:55] Yes. And yeah, I think it's just at this point, knowing what like what what are you doing when you're investing crypto at this point? And in my view is that you're you're essentially still investing in a market where people are trading and it is more like gambling because the values, particularly a lot of crypto, is that there's not there's not like an underlying asset. So you're not investing in a physical thing. And the valuations of so many cryptocurrency and definitely the big name ones is based just on what people are willing to pay for it. So it's it's it's not based on the value of any underlying asset. So if you invest in like a Woolworths, the the value of Woolworths is, you know, essentially their brand, their shops, their distribution system, their technology, that X, Y, Z, when you're investing in crypto at the moment, what you're investing in is a bit that more people are going to be investing in that in that cryptocurrency rather than anything else. But having said that, like, I think if you take sort of like a macro view on cryptocurrency is that some of these will eventually will be commercialised, used, and then we'll begin to foster a real world like a much greater like real world value. And so I'm kind of interested and I guess I've got my eye on there's a few funds set aside to try to aggregate crypto. So you're not necessarily investing in individual currencies, that you're investing in the future crypto? I guess so. I think like if you if you look at it from an investment perspective, that's kind of the on side to look at those opportunities or say that some crypto is linked to specific sort of platforms or specific uses where that underlying use actually has an asset value. So I think that like looking for those kind of opportunities as well. But having said that, like, obviously some people are doing really, really well out of trading crypto. So, yeah, it's not to say that you can't do it. I think it's just like in the same way some people make really good money out of betting on the horses or betting on the AFL or betting on the rugby. You need to kind of look at it like that. So there are traders that are able to understand the trends of when a crypto is going to take off or not take off. And and so they're able to kind of do that day trading. But what I would what I would really advise against is or I think what very much out there is like the strategy for for a lot of people that are trading crypto or a lot of the big players. And you say this, the investment. Right, like you say, is to basically go out and use a whole lot of social media platforms to talk to talk about your current that they've invested in. So there's people that are literally making millions and millions and those tried on particular crypto and then they're spending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars getting different investment blogs to write about that crypto. So what I would say is like being hyper to like any kind of information you say about any particular crypto about to take off, because it probably means what they're doing is just pumping up that stuff, 

Maddy: [00:31:07] a serious market manipulation in 

Christina Hobbs: [00:31:10] to the moment. And then, I mean, it's sort of like you say, investment. I mean, you sort of say investment bank is doing the same thing when when they've got big mergers and acquisitions and they go out of the investment bank, takes a big stake, goes out to a lot of Devizes financial advisors, sell it out to clients. You know, the the investment banks often pull their money out straightaway then and then it's mums and dads that are left mopping up the mess when that merger or acquisition doesn't work out. Not always. But you see that happening. It's a little bit like that kind of happening in the crypto space as well. So, yeah, but I think, on the other hand, like, if you're finding it fun. It's like a good hobby then, like, you know, spending the money you would have spent, I don't know, going to the movies or something, I mean, 

Sophie: [00:31:54] micro investing into crypto 

Maddy: [00:31:57] is the betting in that quite a few times. And I think that explains pretty beautifully why this is the first time we're discussing crypto podcast, because it doesn't quite properly align with the lessons that we're trying to promote. But I think that leads well, I'm interested to hear it in our final segment for the podcast episode. We have been asking our guests to add a company, news trend industry, whatever you like, to our watch list. And the purpose of this really is to get us thinking outside the box and broaden our horizons in the investing space. But of course, we're not financial advisors and this is the educational purposes. So what are you bringing to the watch list today, Medtech? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:32:41] I don't know if you've had anyone talking about medtech yet. So it's an area. So as an ethical fund, because we we're not investing a whole lot of other industries that those industries that we need to, I guess, double down investment on cotton. And I think medtech is a really exciting one. And it's something that's really starting to take off again after Harvard. And I guess some of the companies we're looking at old trends. I don't want to sort of say any specific companies, but I think some of the trends that we're looking at is if you think about what's happened in a workplace, for instance, with Covid, about all these kind of online like Zune stocks soaring and having to do online work practises, this is a really exciting space that we're seeing in medtech as well, which is like how do you do more of the diagnostics and more the monitoring remotely as well? And so I think this is like a space. We're starting to see a lot of information and seeing a lot of movement. There's some interesting mergers happening as well. So, yeah, for me, I've never really invested personally much in medtech, but it's an area that I'm starting to learn and look more at. And I think particularly looking at these kind of what is the future will look like past Covid when I think in general hospital systems are going to get a lot more remote. And looking at which companies are kind of nailing solutions on this. 

Sophie: [00:33:58] Yeah, I think this is like specifically a really cool space that I am definitely looking into. The health care industry is going to change so much over the next 20 to 50 to 100 years. And Maddie and I was talking about when you are making investments, you know, what is the future growth plan for that kind of industry or trend? And I think this is one that's just going to transition so much. And especially after covid saying what we can do remotely means that others will probably follow that as well. So that's an exciting one to add to the watch list. I love it. Now, we always close out by asking our guests a couple of questions, so we'll give you some questions that hopefully easy for you. So you've had an incredible career. Christina, what would you say you're most proud of? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:34:41] I think it was I think it has been there because I've got all these, like, really proud moments of working with the UN for sure. But I think nothing is as hot as starting a superannuation fund. And so I think just from a personal level, I'm just really proud of pushing through that and 

Maddy: [00:35:00] still alive 

Christina Hobbs: [00:35:01] and. Yeah, still alive. 

Maddy: [00:35:04] Love it. And Christina, where do you get your investing inspiration? What do you read into listening to learning from. 

Christina Hobbs: [00:35:12] Sorry for me, I probably got a bit of an insider advantage because we do have our entire investment team. So yeah, it's probably talking a lot to that team, trying to understand what they're looking at and what they're excited by. So, yeah, I probably just have a bit of an inside advantage on that one. And then I think apart from that, like mostly what I do outside of that is, like Sophie said before, is like looking at trends. So I'm just reading even like The Economist, The Financial Times and trying to look at like what a trends that are emerging and then which companies are operating inside those trends and doing a good job inside those trends. 

Sophie: [00:35:49] Yeah, it's just exposing yourself to as many different resources as possible. I think our last question, Christina, is what piece of advice would you give to your younger self starting out on their investment journey? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:36:00] Yeah, so I think just enjoy spending well of it because, you know, it's such a saver. Yes, I think that I enjoy. For me, it was really like it took me, you know, I probably like the opposite of a lot of young people, but it took me a while to actually learn to enjoy spending money as well and not feeling guilty about it. So I think that's fun. But yeah, I think definitely just starting starting early is the key starting early. I'm not taking huge risks, but I think you can have some fun with, you know, saving a few hundred dollars and taking it and taking a bit of benefit on that one. Why you might have your stable investments going as well above it. 

Maddy: [00:36:39] Well, Christina, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time. If anyone wants to find out more about you. About veve soup out, where should they go? 

Christina Hobbs: [00:36:50] Just had to say that I you or you can find me personally on LinkedIn as well. 

Sophie: [00:36:56] Amazing. Thanks so much for your time. We hope you enjoyed chatting with us as much as we enjoyed chatting with you. 

Christina Hobbs: [00:37:01] Right. Thank you. 

Sophie: [00:37:02] God, I love having these chats because it's so inspiring, like speaking to these women who have become CEOs of companies like how do you even become CEO of a company who has the time to be like, I'm going to start up a company?

Maddy: [00:37:14] Or We hope that you enjoyed today's episode as much as we did. For more charts, make sure you jump into our Facebook group, ask any questions from the episode you have. They're very keen to continue the conversation. So what's a Facebook group? 

Sophie: [00:37:28] YIGC Investing podcast? 

Maddy: [00:37:31] Discussion group. Well done. 

Sophie: [00:37:33] Thank you. And also our Instagram. We are loving all the interaction we're getting from you guys on the Instagram. Make sure you DM us or, you know, comment on the posts. We love interacting with you guys. It's why YIGC podcast 

Maddy: [00:37:47] follow us on Twitter or on tik-tok, our Wijk podcast and make sure you subscribe on your favourite podcast platform where we'll catch you next week.

Sophie: [00:37:56] Just go on every social media platform, really.

More About

Meet your hosts

  • Maddy Guest

    Maddy Guest

    Maddy lives in Melbourne, works in finance, but had no idea about investing until she started recently. Her favourite things to do are watching the Hawks play on weekends, reading books, and she says she's happiest, 'when eating pasta with a glass of wine'. Maddy began her investing journey when she started earning a full time income and found myself reading about the benefits of compound interest in the Barefoot Investor. Her mind was blown, and she started just before the pandemic crash in 2020. What's her investing goal? To be financially independent for the rest of her life, and make decisions without being overly stressed about money.
  • Sophie Dicker

    Sophie Dicker

    Sophie lives in Melbourne, and enjoys playing sport, and then drinking red wine immediately after finishing sport. She works in finance, but honestly had no idea about investing until her partner encouraged her to start. She says, 'my interest has only taken off from there - I find it exciting… I mean who doesn’t like watching their money grow?' Her investing goal is to build the freedom to do things that she's passionate about - whether it be start a business, donate to causes close to her, or to take time out of the workforce to start a family. Right now, there’s no specific goal, she just wants to have the freedom when she'll need it.

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