Director of Research, Executive Vice President,
Strategic Insight Mutual Fund Research & Consulting

Twenty two years ago, Avi co-founded Strategic Insight, an investment management industry think-tank and data resource. Today, SI’s research and technologies are shared with mutual fund management companies overseeing about 90% of the U.S. mutual fund industry’s $13 trillion in assets under management, as well as with the S.E.C. and the Investment Company Institute, among others. Globally, Strategic Insight research and consulting services are provided to over 50 of the leading investment managers and distributors benefiting from expanding demand for wealth management in Asia, Europe, and Australia.

Avi contributes to SI research, which spans innovations in U.S. mutual funds; fact-based studies helping in mapping growth opportunities; income-at-retirement and variable annuity trends; independent trustees’ education and 15(c) analytics; peer analysis; product development; and fee and profitability benchmarking. Avi also consults with SI’s clients, which, besides investment managers and fund distributors, include capital market, consulting, law, audit, back-office, and hedge fund firms, and U.S. governmental agencies.

Avi participated in the development of Strategic Insight Simfund databases, the mutual fund industry’s principle competitive and business intelligence tools.

As a passionate industry observer and strategist, Avi is widely quoted in the media and is often a panelist and keynote speaker in investment management industry events. For example, at the June 2007 SEC hearings on the need to update, and possibly repeal, Rule 12b-1, Avi suggested that radical changes to Rule 12b-1 would be harmful to small investors. Or, at the recent meeting of Canadian regulators with the leading investment managers in Canada, Avi provided a US and global perspective on mutual fund innovations and investor preferences.

Avi was raised in a farming village in Israel, studied Chemistry at Tel Aviv University, and received an MBA, with distinction, from New York University’s Stern School of Business in 1985. Avi lives with his wife and three children in New York City.