Brenda King is the treasurer for the Hospital for Sick Children, often referred to by the moniker “Sick Kids.” Born and raised in Montreal, twelve years ago she decided it was time to follow her husband down the 401 to Toronto. This meant leaving her past behind, including the years she spent as finance manager with the McGill University Pension Plan and the years spent with Deloitte as an auditor.

Upon arriving in Toronto, she settled into work at Penreal Capital Management (Director of Investor Relations), but she soon saw her calling at Sick Kids, where she has worked for the past twelve years. Brenda is a chartered accountant and a CFA charterholder.

As Treasurer, Brenda is involved with many Sick Kids entities/departments, including the pension plan (defined contribution and defined benefit components), the foundation, the endowment fund, non-registered investments, banking relations, financial reporting, treasury management, and capital expenditure management. Total assets under management for the various entities are $1.6 billion, and there are over 8,000 employees. She splits her time 50/50 between investment-related duties and other, more traditional, treasurer duties. Somehow, among all of this, she finds time to get involved with the cash management of the Sick Kids retail operations. Sick Kids owns and operates a parking lot as well as many well-known franchises on what is referred to as “Main Street,” a centralized shopping area located inside the hospitals sprawling three million square foot downtown campus. Among other establishments, “Main Street” has a Roots store, a Shoppers Drug Mart, a Starbucks, and a Tim Horton’s. At different times in the day, Brenda could be analyzing investment manager performance, analyzing cash flow statements, or trying out how to replenish coins for the retail operations when the armoured trucks are on strike! Now that is multi-tasking!

Brenda has seen an increased focus on risk management and governance in the past few years. More questions are being asked, and more explanations are required. One communication challenge has been to explain the volatility in the annual pension expense. The expense can fluctuate by millions of dollars in a given year due to discount rates, and communicating the rationale behind the numbers is no easy matter.

Brenda has acted as a volunteer treasurer of the Board of Directors of CFA Society Toronto and was the previous chair of its Finance Committee. She is also chair of the Member Services Committee of the Pension Investment Association of Canada and has been a member of the committee for the past five years. She is married and has a teenage son. She likes to golf, ski, and travel.

In your wide-ranging and very accomplished career, what have been the driving forces that have made it evolve in such a unique way?

Brenda King: Working in an innovative, dynamic environment has always been the driving force for me.

Unlike most people, you have pursued work and volunteered extensively in the not-for-profit world while also having extensive experience in the profit-oriented financial world. Are there lessons from your experience in working in one field that you have found valuable in the other?

BK: Although the stakeholders may be very different in the non-profit and the profit world, the issues involved are not as different as one might think. Both worlds have seen an increased focus on accountability, risk management, governance, and transparency, resulting in increased reporting to stakeholders.

Can you share some of the highlights and accomplishments in your career that you are most proud of?

BK: Passing the CA exams on the first try and getting through the three CFA exams in three years without having to repeat any exams have been two of the biggest accomplishment in my career! More recently, working in investments through the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 and the volatility that we have experienced since then have given me invaluable insights into risk management.

What aspects of the CFA body of knowledge, code of ethics and standards of practice have been of greatest value to you in your career?

BK: The sections that relate to acting with integrity, competence, and respect for all stakeholders’ interests.

How do you see the new realities of extremely low interest rates, slow economic growth, and a rapidly aging population affecting the pension fund investment field in the years ahead?

BK: For pension plans, a prolonged low-interest rate environment has kept discount rates low, resulting in increased liabilities. Poor market performance has not helped funding levels. Pension plans will have to work hard to find innovative ways of investing to improve their performance.

Do you have any advice for new CFA charterholders that you would like to share?

BK: For me, having the opportunity to become actively involved in CFA Society Toronto, first as a member of the finance committee then as treasurer on the board, has been very fulfilling and given me wonderful networking opportunities as well. I would strongly recommend that new charterholders think about volunteering as a way to give back to their profession.

CHARTERHOLDER PROFILE is a regular feature of The Analyst. Do you have suggestions for members that we should profile? Email us with the member’s name and a few sentences about who he/she is and why this person would make an interesting choice for a profile. TheAnalyst@cfatoronto.ca