Abhinav Chandra reflects on the fall of sales during the pandemic, provides a sales forecast on the coming holiday season, and offers advice on actions fashion companies should take now. Tackling the dual threat of COVID-19 and climate change; a data-driven action plan for retailers to adapt quickly to changing consumer purchasing behavior. It has been an eventful few months since we last published our forecast on May 13th 2020. We have seen the slowdown of COVID-19 cases in…

  Tommy Kim provides an article that explains the differences between Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC). Private Equity (PE) vs. Venture Capital (VC). You suddenly realize that you are being presented with two similar, yet different types of capital sources. PE and VC investment management businesses offer investors different types of return on capital using unique risk profiles in long-term illiquid assets. Whether you are interested in this side of the business as entrepreneurs and CEOs seeking capital…

  As both people and businesses begin to feel the economic impacts of the Coronavirus, Tobias Baer provides clear steps that can help your business deal with delinquent accounts. Many of my clients so far have experienced less delinquencies on consumer debt than I had feared. Unfortunately I don’t think that I can claim that this is only because I’ve helped them draw up extraordinarily effective credit policies and scoring systems – instead, this time around delinquencies themselves might be…

  Martin Nel shares his synthesis on recent events and data that have informed his outlook on how COVID-19 will affect major players in Canadian Retail Banking. Covid-19: When will it end? What will be the damage to the economy? What will be the impact on the major players in Canadian Retail Banking?  Looking at the S&P 500 over the last few weeks, it seems that it will all be over soon, with limited economic damage. Let’s call this the…

  David Gross takes a look ahead at the looming concern about pension plans.    Author’s note: This article focuses on defined benefit pension plans in the private sector. To learn more about the pension challenges facing municipalities and states, check out this article by Mary Williams Walsh at The New York Times and the Federal Reserve’s analysis from December 2019.  Stock markets plummet by 20 to 30 percent. Long-term interest rates drop. Future economic growth and asset returns are…

  Pieter Lekkerkerk describes current alternative pricing models making inroads in car insurance in the US: pay-per-mile and driving-score based pricing.    In the last few decades car insurance premiums have traditionally been set based on o a risk assessment questionnaire (typically covering the car, its usage, the driver and her/his background among others), enriched with data from e.g., credit bureaus and the Department of Motor Vehicles (on e.g. traffic fines). In the wave that saw the disruption of many…