Managing Director, Head of Global Research
Candace Browning has long been a leading voice in investment research and her influence just keeps growing.
Bank of America’s head of global research since 2009, Browning last year was named to Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance for the second time as her team increased its number of analyses published by 15% and readership of BofA’s research increased by 20%. Perhaps even more notably, in every year since 2011, BofA has been ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 in Institutional Investor magazine’s rankings of global research firms.
Always in search of innovation in the research space, Browning’s team last year constructed a library of what it calls Global Proprietary Signals — disruptive research that brings new metrics to the evaluation of economies, markets, strategies and asset classes.
Many of these 75 indicators — for example, the Global Risk-Love Indicator — have been successful in quantifying investor emotions and psychological factors to accurately predict swings in investor sentiment, as well as startling correlations between an enterprise’s safety record and its governance. Its Apple Supply Chain Indicator tracks BofA’s U.S. customers’ spending on electronics imported from Korea and Taiwan to help determine how supply chain disruptions could affect investing decisions.
Browning’s team — roughly 680 research analysts in more than 20 countries — is also doing extensive research around the future of work, environmental, social and governance issues and diversity and inclusion. One report, for example, recently pointed out that it will take 257 years to close the gender economic gap globally at today’s rate of advancement for women.
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Browning often does podcasts for the firm’s wealth management clients and, before the pandemic, she would just go into the studio in BofA’s offices and sit down and record. That was no longer an option when the company closed its offices, so Browning assembled a working home studio, complete with lighting, to support virtual meetings as well as those well-received podcasts.
“The show must go on,” she said.
Outside of BofA, Browning is passionate about conservation. She sits on the boards of Dutchess Land Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the rural character of Dutchess County, New York, and the Atlantic Salmon Federation, a world-leading science and advocacy organization dedicated to conserving and restoring wild Atlantic salmon.
