Frontier adds capital markets skills

Frontier Advisors has appointed Alice Berriman as a senior consultant within the firm's capital markets and asset allocation team.

Berriman will focus on portfolio construction and work closely with Frontier's emerging quantitative team.

She joins Frontier from HESTA's portfolio construction and risk team.

Before her four years with the superannuation fund, she worked as a research analyst for several firms, including Pitcher Partners Investment Services and JBWere, before doing a two-year stint with Stanford Law School as a data and reporting development coordinator.

She joined HESTA in 2018.

Frontier Advisors director of investment strategy, Chris Trevillyan, said Berriman had an impressive professional pedigree and the asset owner perspective she will bring to our team will also be extremely beneficial.

"Alice will add to our quantitative capability, which has grown strongly in recent years thanks to our PhD internship program," he said.

Meantime, Frontier is adding another permanent member to the team.

Viola Miao, a finance PhD candidate at Monash University, is the fourth intern through Frontier's dedicated PhD internship program and the third to ultimately join the asset consultant's permanent staff.

The program sees PhD students undergo a six-month internship program, simultaneously completing PhDs in finance while working in the investment strategy team.

Trevillyan hopes building closer links with the university sector will bring a new cohort of investment professionals into a fast-growing industry hungry for talent.

"Investors are increasingly looking for people with strong quantitative finance skills," Trevillyan said.

"If we can raise the opportunity of a career in investment strategy by working directly with universities and their students, not only are we bringing valuable skills and knowledge into our firm and the sector more broadly, but we will be giving students visibility of a career path they may otherwise have not considered."