Perhaps more importantly, few businesses appear to believe they have 'pricing power', and individual price changes against a low inflation backdrop are much more transparent than was the case under high inflation. Witness, for example, the degree of scrutiny of price rises in the period after the introduction of the GST, or the attention routinely given to changes in petrol prices.
Given the focus on active management, external fund managers are usually given slightly more freedom, in terms of credit and currency allocations for example, than internal portfolio managers. Our External Fund Management Programme is also aimed at diversifying reserves into asset classes which we do not have the required resources to manage internally, in terms of both systems and human capital.