Investment research is a significant strength that Ascension Investment Management brings to our clients. Manager research is as much an art as a science, and requires dedicated personal attention from senior, experienced professionals. Our investment team is dedicated to independent investment manager research and is responsible for sourcing investment opportunities, performing due diligence, and making tactical allocation decisions.
Our investment directors have an average of over 20 years of investment industry experience including several former CIOs with experience in building a fully diversified portfolio and managing the associated risks.
Our four senior investment directors, together with our CIO, Managing Director of Strategy and Manager Research, and our Managing Director of Strategy and Risk Management comprise our internal Investment Committee. The Investment Committee is charged with determining market views that we want to express in our clients' portfolios, vetting new investment manager recommendations prior to final approval by the CIO, and scrutinizing how the new managers will affect the risks and biases being expressed in the portfolios. Collaboration across the investment team is a key component to building effective portfolios, not only to identify risk concentrations that might overlap different asset classes, but also to access the shared perspectives of our experienced investment personnel.
Each investment director:
- Sources and conducts extensive due diligence on each manager they select
- Builds portfolios based on their market knowledge, understanding of the underlying risks and biases within the portfolio, and assessment of how a strategy should perform in various market environments. (Investment directors may opportunistically tilt portfolios in response to shifting growth and inflation conditions and other macroeconomic risk indicators)
- Analyzes manager-level risks, exposures, performance metrics, organizational strengths/weaknesses, and the expertise of the managers that we select. (Each investment director has in-depth knowledge of the managers for which the director is responsible through frequent portfolio updates and periodic on-site visits)
- Analyzes position-level risks within each of the portfolios that we manage
- Reacts quickly to unfavorable changes at the manager’s organization, such as unexplained underperformance, organizational/personnel changes at a firm, significant asset growth, or strategy divergence