Virtual Forecast Dinner was celebrated on April 28

It was very important for CFA Society Finland Board to organize Forecast Dinner this year as well. There was unfortunately no possibility to have the event in-person, thus a virtual dinner via zoom was the route to take.

Board president Antti Raappana, CFA and Niina Arkko, CFA acted as the hosts for the evening. We were happy to welcome about thirty members to the Dinner. To celebrate the event we gifted all the participants a dinner delivered by Wolt for the duration of the event. We encouraged everyone to keep their cameras on to make the event feel more communal and personal.

Mr. Madis Müller, CFA

We were honored to be able to provide excellent speeches from international guests during the evening. First presentation was delivered by the Governor of Estonian Central Bank, Madis Müller, CFA. He spoke on "The road to recovery and the role of central banks". After an interesting presentation, luckily Mr. Müller was able to answer some questions form the crowd as well. The participants were eager to find out the forecasts on debt, the role of central bank support and the part certain key country economies play.

After Mr. Müller’s presentation we split the group into smaller breakout rooms to allow discussion on the presentation as well as exchange thoughts and talk between new and old acquaintances. We ended up using these smaller discussion groups twice during the evening. Even though not quite a dinner table, it was close enough:)

Mr. Salman Ahmed, PhD.

Second presentation was given by Mr. Salman Ahmed,PhD, Global Head of Macro and SAA, Fidelity International, on Central Banks and Climate Change. Mr. Salman gave us a detailed forecast into how different economies are impacted by climate change and presented different future scenarios, from best to worst. Important to note that climate change might have very different outcomes in different parts of he world; where Northern countries benefit, the hotter countries face severe difficulties. As both presentation themes were highly topical, there were plenty of questions from participants, to which our speakers gave answers to, as much as time allowed.

Richard Bentefour, Head of Marketing North Region, from Fidelity, introduced Mr. Ahmed as well as gave us a small foreword on Fidelity International. We were happy to invite Richard to experience what our annual Forecast Dinner is about.

After our second breakout room session was time to declare the Volunteer of the Year. This time the award went to Lili Kirikal, CFA, an active CFA Society Finland member from Estonia. Lili was thanked to have been extremely helpful during many years of Research Challenge, in many different roles. During this year’s Research Challenge Lili acted as a mentor to a university team. Thank you Lili for your commitment to volunteer work!

Lili Kirikal, CFA

Next up was presenting the results for last year’s forecasting. Niina Arkko walked us through the exciting results. Important to note that the Forecast Dinner was held mid-February last year just before the major lock downs all over the world, so attendees had no knowledge of the major impact the pandemic would have on the world.

After going over all the results, the winner for this year was declared. Our warmest congratulations to Kati Eriksson, CFA! This is actually the second time that Kati has won the Forecaster of the year. Well done!

See you next year in our Forecast Dinner, definitely in-person:)!