The US-founded company’s inaugural Global Institutional Investor Survey – which surveyed a total of 700 investors and consultants around the globe, including 158 across Asia Pacific – identified the ongoing global pandemic, the shift to investing in alternatives and ESG integration as the most dominant themes of 2021.
Fifty-two per cent of those surveyed believe the COVID pandemic would be the biggest influence on changes to asset allocation and investment strategy, while 44 per cent said they planned to shift from public to private markets this year.
“With simultaneous crises in global public health as well as economies and markets worldwide, 2020 offered us an extraordinary opportunity to assess the practices and attitudes of major institutional investors in managing both portfolios and day-to-day operations,” senior managing director, head of distribution, Asia Pacific, Simon England-Brammer, said.
“Perhaps unsurprisingly the pandemic was a strong driver shaping investment decisions for the year ahead, but additionally respondents in Asia Pacific pointed to alternatives and ESG as playing a significant role in their portfolio construction for 2021.”
Similar to Australian research firm Investment Trends’ own report released this week, Nuveen’s survey found that respondents are considering ESG factors in investment decision-making (62 per cent).
“More and more, market research is helping make the case that ‘responsible investing’ can deliver competitive returns, but clearly there is a need to put more effort into validating the investment proposition along with the positive impact,” global head of responsible investing, Amy O'Brien, added.
“The marketplace would benefit from more attention and focused effort on helping prospective ESG investors resolve concerns and clarify objectives for their stakeholders and themselves.”
Neil Griffiths
Neil is the Deputy Editor of the wealth titles, including ifa and InvestorDaily.
Neil is also the host of the ifa show podcast.
