Episodes 252 and 253 of the InsuranceAUM Podcast + 11 New Articles!
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Episode 252: Lower Middle Market Opportunities: How Star Mountain Creates Alpha Through Active Lending
In this episode of the InsuranceAUM.com podcast,?Stewart Foley, CFA?welcomes?Brett Hickey, Founder and CEO of Star Mountain Capital , for an engaging look at investment in the U.S. lower middle market. Brett shares his unique journey from a small-town upbringing in Canada to founding a prominent private credit firm. Drawing from his early experiences, Brett discusses how Star Mountain Capital builds on core values of community and collaboration, focusing on lending to smaller, often family-owned businesses with strong fundamentals. He explains the firm’s strategic emphasis on these investments, citing the sector's limited competition and inherent value as an uncorrelated asset class. Brett also highlights the opportunity to add alpha to portfolios through Star Mountain's private credit and secondary offerings.
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Episode 253: Capitalizing on the Shift in Private Credit: Strategies for Insurance Companies
In this episode of the InsuranceAUM.com podcast,?Stewart Foley, CFA?hosts?Armen Panossian, co-CEO and Head of Performing Credit at Oaktree Capital Management, L.P. , for a deep dive into insurers' role in alternative investing, especially in private credit. Armen shares insights on the evolving sentiment in today’s markets, where economic fundamentals, regulatory influences, and the effects of recent rate hikes are shaping debt and equity strategies. He details how technical and regulatory shifts, like the implementation of Basel III in the U.S., are creating new avenues for insurers to capitalize on asset-backed finance while banks retreat from specific lending areas. Armen emphasizes that private credit remains a valuable asset class for insurers, especially given the long-term growth and diversification opportunities it provides alongside efficient rating structures.
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Vintage 2024: The Case for Next Cycle Opportunistic Property Investment
Sophisticated property investors have long employed various forms of diversification and allocation discipline to manage risk and ensure portfolio exposure to opportunities for potential outsized return. Among these, the discipline to diversify across investment vintages, is important to successful long-term investment in closed-end (finite life) opportunistic investment vehicles. Inherently, real estate has strong cyclical dynamics; however, how prescient we believe ourselves to be, no crystal ball is perfect, and no forecasting model is infallible. Thankfully, history has been a consistent, though occasionally unkind teacher. We believe most investors understand that the greatest investment opportunities often present themselves when sentiment, and current valuations, have found their cyclical nadir. In the current real estate valuation cycle, we believe that moment is now.
Portfolio Finance: Missing a $100+ Billion Annual Opportunity?
The rapid expansion of private markets has created an opportunity for investors to earn attractive returns in private IG credit, underpinned by the financing needs of asset managers and funds. Yet this segment of the market remains little known and less understood.
From The Field: Could a 5% 10-year Treasury yield be around the corner?
Key Insights
Click HERE to read more from T. Rowe Price
Regenerative agriculture: optimizing outputs
Growing more food—more efficiently. Regenerative agriculture investment is attracting rising interest as a way to minimize the environmental impact of agriculture without compromising productivity.
Learn how investing in agriculture can achieve long-term value and generate income while aligning with environmentally positive outcomes. Oliver Williams, Brent McGowan, and Julie Koeninger explain how we define regenerative agriculture, with a focus on soil health and productivity that guides management decisions for optimizing returns and sustainability while feeding a growing population.
Click HERE to read more from Manulife Investment Management
Beyond the ballot: the real drivers behind stock market performance
With the 2024 U.S. presidential election fast approaching, many investors are focused on the influence politics might play in their portfolios. Topics such as tax policy, tariffs, regulation, and spending are dominating the narrative, and guesses on how these issues may play out are causing speculation across markets.
Click HERE to read more from Manulife Investment Management
Did infrastructure weather the inflation storm?
Infrastructure investments are generally considered to have strong downside protection and inflation linkage, but since infrastructure became an investable asset class, inflation has remained relatively benign. In 2022 as the world came out of lockdown, the theory came face-to-face with reality.
Click HERE to read more from StepStone Group
The Value Opportunity: Value Investing in Today’s Environment
Growth equities have attracted investor attention over the past decade, but we believe investors can benefit from value investing.
Click HERE to read more from Jennison Associates
Ag Finance: Too Much of a Good Thing: The Paradox of Perfect Weather
Rain makes grain, and in 2024, crop growers in the U.S. received plenty of it. When agricultural commodities become too abundant, prices decline alongside sector profitability. Although drought conditions pose considerable challenges, they also create notable opportunities for U.S. crop producers, making it a potentially more favorable environment to operate in.
Click HERE to read more from MetLife Investment Management
AI: A Revolution In Motion
AI is one of the most significant secular, long-term growth themes in the markets today. Investors have bid up many companies—and entire sectors—in anticipation of the impact AI capabilities could have on returns. But how large a role is AI already playing in these companies and sectors, and how much of a role might AI play in the future?
Click HERE to read more from Jennison Associates
3 Ways to Optimize Insurance Investment Operations
The insurance industry is undergoing a digital transformation, and technology is at the core of this evolution. To stay competitive, insurance companies must have technology ecosystems that are efficient, scalable and aligned with current and future business goals. The complex nature of insurance investment accounting and operations requires robust technology solutions to manage diverse asset classes, regulatory compliance and financial reporting. Outdated systems can lead to data integrity issues, operational inefficiencies and significant investment of time and resources from internal staff.
Click HERE to read more from SS&C Technologies
Adams Street Partners Closes 2024 Global Fund Program with $1.1 Billion in Commitments
Private Equity Program Celebrates 30 Years
CHICAGO, IL – October 28, 2024 –?Adams Street Partners, LLC, a leading private markets investment firm with over $60 billion in assets under management, has held the final closing of the Adams Street 2024 Global Fund Program with $1.1 billion in committed capital. The Global Fund Program is designed to provide access to some of the world’s best small- to mid-growth private companies through a targeted, global private equity portfolio. It provides exposure to all of Adams Street’s investment strategies, including primaries, secondaries, co-investments, growth equity and private credit, across North America, Europe, and Asia.
The Global Fund Program will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2025.
Click HERE to read more from Adams Street Partners