Webcasts

Recently, Backstop and Mercer sponsored a productivity study to understand how institutional investors are spending their time. The results are quite shocking – on average, 30% of an investment team member’s time is wasted on non-core and non-value-adding tasks. In this webinar, Backstop and Mercer share their in-depth survey results and findings, as well as provide their recommendations on how institutional investors can better harness technology, research, and data to better optimize their time.

As the market continues to digest volatility and the challenges of meeting return objectives, investors are seeking tools to make sense of their new reality.

The No. 1 question when portfolios don’t deliver outcomes as expected is “Why?” Over the past four years, Northern Trust Asset Management has individually partnered with institutional investors and consultants around the globe to help answer that question. Using a unique quantitative lens to examine more than 200 portfolios and 1,000 investment strategies totaling $200 billion-plus, it saw six common drivers emerge across all investor segments.

Investing in real assets is often considered a trade-off between performance and liquidity, but it is much more complex and this perception diminishes the multiple roles real assets can play in a portfolio. It is important to understand the roles and benefits of real assets, as well as key considerations when selecting public verses private investments — such as whether investors are being rewarded for the risk they are taking.

Fixed income investments have been the anchor of most portfolios in 2020 as the global pandemic and subsequent economic collapse battered risk-on sentiment. But this flight to quality and extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimulus have driven yields to all-time low levels. How can you face these challenges and still achieve desired goals—namely, preserving liquidity, ensuring diversified sources of income, and protecting purchasing power?

Allocator thinktanks are a large part of what we do at CIO. Times are changing fast in 2020, and this webinar series is designed to help you navigate the new terrain. Each month, the editors of CIO and industry experts will discuss ideas to vet new opportunities, hedge risks, redefine benchmarks, and plan for burgeoning trends on the horizon. Join us and bring your best ideas.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and the associated halt in economic activity have precipitated a wave of downstream effects that are of particular significance to the stable value asset class. Stable value is a popular principal preservation strategy available to defined contribution (DC) plan participants.

Join our webcast as experts share how institutional investors can capitalize on the yield of alternatives by focusing on the idiosyncratic risks that drive returns. This approach allows investors to stitch together multi-asset portfolios in a more efficient, coherent way.

Your research analysts are adept with technology and data. They’re wizards with Excel and generating extensive reports, but are they equipping you with a structured understanding of global investment trends, emerging strategies that may be of interest and your existing managers in the broader context of their peer groups?

Among many other things, Chief Investment Officers are responsible for creating a culture that attracts and retains world-class investment talent for their teams. One way to differentiate themselves has been to innovate on the traditional “specialist” or “superstar” investment team model where investment team members own a particular asset class. Recent years have seen the rise of a “generalist” model where investment officers research and invest across all asset classes. Some CIOs have even created “hybrid” models where they attempt to gain the best of both worlds.

Equity markets have been in a secular bull market for more than a decade and recently set new all-time highs. With valuations rich by multiple measures and U.S. economic growth slowing, many allocators are worried the bull market could be running out of steam.

What can you do to take advantage in this dynamic market?

We’ve assembled a panel of Chief Information Officers from institutional investment firms to share their hard-won wisdom and lessons learned leading digital transformations at their respective firms.

Demand for small cap equities has been tied to everything from tax cuts to trade wars in recent years, with some of the largest ever swings in investor positioning following suit. After outperforming large caps by a wide margin to start the year, we’ve seen small caps lag since summer. Join iShares and FTSE Russell for a discussion of the drivers behind those differences, and the conditions that could lead to a reversal.

Olivia Engel, CIO of Active Quantitative Equity at State Street Global Advisors, discusses how her team balances access to sophisticated data sets and new technology with an investment philosophy that is rooted in fundamentals and economic rationale.