“So what do I do with my money?” asks BlackRock’s latest marketing campaign. But the question everyone really wants answered is: “What will I make on my money?” There will be plenty of discussion about investment returns at this week’s NAPF conference.

In the language of one of the plenary sessions at the conference, we now live in a low-return world. The long-term returns on growth assets such as equities, assumed to be 6% or 7% a year before the crash, may never recover to those levels.