Insights

Institutions are putting hedge funds back to work as risk tools, not side bets. The signal is clear: BlackRock’s Investment Institute has urged allocators to lift hedge fund weights by up to five percentage points, its largest guidance on ...

Catastrophe bonds (cat bonds) have moved from niche to mainstream allocator tool. Record primary supply in 2025—$10.5bn in Q2 alone and a $54–56bn outstanding market mid-year—reflects insurers’ demand for alternative capital and investors’ ...

The Netherlands is shifting from DB-style promises to DC-style accruals under the Future Pensions Act (Wtp). A sizeable share of assets plans to transition around January 2026, with a follow-up wave likely in January 2027. The shift ...

Life settlements—the purchase of life insurance policies from original holders—have gained traction as a niche alternative asset class offering actuarially driven returns and structural diversification. Institutional investors, including ...

Hedge funds are more plentiful than ever, but true alpha has never been scarcer. Crowding, high cash yields, and performance dispersion make today’s environment particularly unforgiving for allocators. For CIOs and family offices, the ...

Every allocator knows the experience. A hedge fund manager with a stellar track record suddenly falters. Performance dips, peers outperform, and questions surface in the Investment Committee. Do you stay patient and give the manager room ...

Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA), epitomized by the classic 60/40 portfolio, worked for decades under stable conditions. But 2022’s equity–bond sell-off showed how fragile static mixes have become as correlations shift. Old assumptions, ...

Institutional investors and family office CIOs know that not all “absolute-return” vehicles are created equal. Hedge funds, UCITS liquid alternatives, and bank-provided QIS products can all deliver alternative strategies – but each comes ...

Liquidity is often thought of as simply “liquid” or “illiquid,” but in reality it exists along a continuum. It represents how quickly and reliably an asset can be converted to cash without significant loss in value. At one extreme, cash ...