Some 75 per cent of investors plan to increase their allocation to real assets in the next five years, according to a poll of attendees at the 2016 Global Real Assets Conference in New York.
The annual forum, now in its 16th year, brought together CIOs, heads of real assets, heads of real estate, heads of infrastructure, other investment professionals from leading defined benefit and defined contribution plans, insurance providers, endowments and foundations, and consultants to discuss trends and strategies in real estate, infrastructure and maritime investing around the globe.
Current industry sentiments were captured through a series of polling questions to the group of 155 attendees, including representatives from 130 US and international institutional investors, who travelled from as far as Australia, Korea and Japan to attend.
Fifty one per cent of attending investors currently allocate 7 per cent to 15 per cent of their total portfolio to real assets with 18 per cent of attending investors allocating more than 15 per cent. Some 41 per cent of attending investors view infrastructure as the most interesting real asset investment opportunity to add to a domestic core real estate allocation.
“In the face of volatile equity markets and inadequate bond yields, we're seeing investor interest in real assets spike," said Bernie McNamara, Head of Global Real Assets Client Strategy and Omni Solutions, JP Morgan Asset Management. "As they have long done with fixed income and equities, investors are now building larger and more diversified real assets allocations by adding global and sector exposure, including infrastructure, maritime and international real estate to the real asset mainstay, domestic core real estate."
JP Morgan Asset Management Global Real Assets has more than $90 billion in assets under management and more than 400 professionals in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific, as of 31 March, 2016. With a 45-year history of successful investing, the team's broad capabilities provide many of the world's most sophisticated investors with a global platform of real estate, infrastructure and transportation strategies driven by local investment talent with disciplined investment processes consistently implemented across asset types and regions.
