We recently held our annual Manager Dialogue hosting over 125 funds management firms from around the country and providing an update on what we are looking for on behalf of our clients.
We are happy to update fund managers without asking them to pay any fees to attend our event as we value the role they play in supporting our clients and we like to remain at ‘arm’s length’ commercially in our dealings with managers. That’s consistent with our unconflicted approach to providing advice.
Managers heard the major investment themes we will be looking at in the year ahead are climate change, geopolitics and changing investment regimes, noting that strategies that were successful in the recent past may not be optimal for the future.
More specifically, opportunistic global small caps and pre-IPO ideas, insurance-linked securities, global private debt (including emerging markets), infrastructure co-investments, needs based property sectors (including build-to-rent) and climate aligned companies and unlisted assets are all likely to catch the attention of Frontier’s researchers.
The issue of unlisted investment valuations was also given a good amount of airtime in the discussion with the gathered crowd of asset managers who were told to expect Frontier to seek a greater focus on valuation governance, more time spent discussing the valuation process, methodology and frequency and more demanding information requests.
In a slightly lighter tone, we shared the results of our traditional managers versus advisers prediction survey on markets for the year ahead with the combined forecast tipping alternative debt, unlisted infrastructure and international equities as the sectors to watch for the year ahead.
