Multi Asset

Creating and managing sustainable investment solutions

Key points

  1. Asset allocation is the primary driver of investor returns

  2. Integrating sustainability, macro research and security selection insights in the investment outcome

  3. Investing in Robeco’s highly rated sustainable, quantitative and fundamental strategies

Would you populate your fantasy football team with 11 strikers? Clearly not. You need multiple skills and characteristics to create a winning team. Our multi-asset solution aims to be just that, by offering a range of equity strategies, bonds, property and other types of investment in one simple package. Successful multi-asset investors know when to set up an expansive attack approach or a conservative defense orientation.

Alpha drivers

There are three ways in which multi asset is highly attractive: it identifies investment opportunities, uses diversification to reduce risk and integrates sustainability throughout the solution. Our team draws on the toolkit of Robeco’s quantitative and fundamental alpha-seeking capabilities to deliver cutting-edge insights.

Our award-winning outlook publication, the 5-year Expected Returns, is our annual flagship publication and is used as the basis from which we take our alpha drivers and build a robust portfolio.

Our approach

We believe financial markets are inefficient and active management can generate alpha. The investment process is a structured, active and fundamental top-down approach:

Idea generation
01

Idea generation

We use fundamental research to identify alpha opportunities. After deploying the 5-year Expected Returns to start building a robust portfolio, the tactical asset allocation investment process is used to assess and rationalize the gap between fair value and current market prices.

Decision making
02

Decision making

Nobody has the monopoly of ‘good’ ideas. The investment ideas are rigorously tested to determine whether the return potentials and investment goals are met and aligned with client objectives. These ideas are routinely discussed and challenged, and sustainability considerations are carefully weighed up. As a result of these discussions, decisions are made about which trades to implement.

Portfolio construction & monitoring
03

Portfolio construction & monitoring

Next, we select strategies that best reflect the investment objective: either Robeco strategies, or derivatives or ETFs if Robeco does not offer the required strategy. A variety of metrics such as volatility and diversification, asset-class betas and tracking errors as well as exposures to sustainability dimensions are continuously monitored.

Execution
04

Execution

The execution of the investment views in the markets is centralized outside the team, in line with Robeco trading procedures.

Team

The team manages all Robeco’s fundamental multi-asset solutions, from retail funds to institutional mandates. The lead portfolio managers have extensive experience in managing multi-asset portfolios, deploying tactical asset allocation overlays, and collaborating with our Sustainable Investing Center of Expertise. In addition, the sustainable multi-asset solutions (SMAS) team leverages all of our in-house research and capabilities. Multi-asset specialists, for instance, are responsible for generating tactical asset allocation views and strategy characteristics.

Sustainability

Sustainability is at the heart of all our Sustainable Multi-Asset Solutions. In practice, this means we are able to measure and steer any multi-asset portfolio on a wide range of environmental, social and governance dimensions (ESG profile), decarbonization and SDGs based on our sustainability framework. And we can measure the environmental footprint of any portfolio against a series of tangible environmental indicators such as greenhouse gas emissions, water use and waste generation.

Sub-strategies

Ingredients

01

Research driven

A true understanding of asset allocation is in our DNA

02

Conviction based

Flexible and opportunistic when implementing investment views

03

Core solution

A central investment of a long term portfolio