In asset management, investors are faced with many choices: Do they go active or passive? Do they pick stocks through fundamental analysis or quantitative strategies? Do they manage assets in-house or do they appoint external managers?
But often these binary choices are too simplistic and ignore the vast complexity of real life situations.
One active strategy might not stack up against another and the decision to go passive might be predicated on the available capacity in a market. Similarly, the trend towards in-house management might be a threat to one manager, but a blessing for another if they are able to forge closer ties with the asset owners. FinTech companies might challenge some parts of the asset management value chain, but for others they could offer a chance to cut costs.
In making decisions, therefore, we might be comparing apples with apples, but these apples could have very different flavours and choosing one over the other could lead to vastly different outcomes. Often a combination of available options is best, blending the different flavours into a palatable concoction without dismissing any avenues out of hand.
In this roundtable, we go beyond the binary and delve deeper into some of these trends that might shape the future of the industry.
Themes to be covered include:
- In-sourcing and internal team development in large superannuation funds
- Implications for asset manager mandates and relationships
- Global mandate flows and trends: Winning strategies in the Asia Pacific institutional market
- Disruption and the future of asset management product and distribution
To see the photo gallery of this program, please click here.
