Disruptive forces to markets and institutional investors’ own operations will play critical roles in the ways in which asset owners position their portfolios to manage emerging risks and seize tactical investment opportunities, according to discussion and debate among global asset owners and investment consultants at the 18th annual MSCI Institutional Investor Forum.
MSCI has hosted the institutional investor forum in Sacramento, California, in partnership with CalPERS and CalSTRS, for 18 years. This year’s Oct. 25 event served as a venue for investors to exchange ideas on how the changing definition of geopolitical risk and a multi-year period of macro volatility have impacted their portfolios.
Ashley Lester, global head of research at MSCI, argued that these trends — coupled with the long-term effects of climate change — increase investors’ needs for new ways to source, manage and analyze data.
“We have both the necessity, because of a range of investment trends, and the ability to shift risk from being a backward-looking, largely control-oriented function to being a forward-looking and investment-focused function,” he explained. “The point I’m making is not that…
