柏瑞投资亚太区行政总裁Kirk Sweeney：资产管理行业当前面临的四大趋势

谢谢。柏瑞投资非常有幸被邀请参加今天的论坛。首先我想说，中国对我们来说不仅是第二故乡。在许多方面，它是我们的第一故乡。

柏瑞投资最初是美国国际集团的资管业务部门，总所周知，该公司最初于20世纪初在上海成立。多年来，随着美国国际集团资管业务的发展，我们对中国以及亚洲地区的承诺不断扩大。十多年前，我们被现在的母公司——总部位于香港的盈科拓展集团收购时，进一步加强了这一承诺。

今天，这种有别于同行上市公司的所有权结构，使我们能够利用盈科拓展广泛的亚洲网络，让客户获得在整个亚洲的投资机会。我们从一开始就积极参加股票通和债券通业务——这是我们将西方客户引进中国的一个例子，推动市场互联互通和互惠。另一方面，我们1,430亿美元的管理资产规模中有一半以上来自亚太地区——这一比例在所有全球资产管理公司中是最高的。

明年，一家最具活力的在岸资产管理合资企业，柏瑞投资和华泰证券的合资公司，将迎来20周年庆典。华泰柏瑞是中国ETF资产类别的最大参与者之一，被评为2022年增长最快的在岸合资企业。

我们自认为对中国和亚洲作为投资目的地还是来源的了解和认识不亚于任何投资公司。同时我们也是一家全球性的资金管理公司，在纽约、东京、伦敦和其他地方都有办公室。

因此，当我们观察行业趋势和规划我们自己的发展战略时，我们总是通过这个双焦镜头来看待它们：看这些趋势可能会如何逐渐塑造中国的行业发展，反之亦然。习近平主席在2022年12月中央经济工作会议上的讲话中强调了外国投资的重要性。资产管理属于这个政策愿景的一部分。

这就是我在今天很短的时间内与大家分享的重点内容：这种“双向”视角的益处。

我们今天关注的一个资管行业趋势是所谓的 “新受托人”。

众所周知，投资受托人的传统挑战是要平衡风险和收益为客户谋取利益。但今天同等重要的第三个层面：平衡风险收益和可持续发展的承诺。许多可持续性原则与习主席的全球文明倡议有很多共同之处。今天，资产管理者们在评估投资的长期吸引力时，会通过将外部成本特别是气候变化的外部成本内化到他们通常的财务绩效计算中，从而促进这些原则。

这可能会给资产管理者带来一个难题。因为，到今天为止，仍然缺乏一个可用于报告和评估ESG重要方面的普遍接受的框架，类似于报告和核实财务绩效所遵循的公认标准。  

尽管如此，我们认为最成功的资产管理者不会是那些举起手来等待最佳实践和数据追赶上来的人。相反，最成功的资产管理者将是那些勇往直前，帮助界定 “新”受托责任的要求，并积极与被投公司、其他市场参与者和政策制定者接触，推动实现风险收益目标、可持续发展承诺和客户目标之间的真正协调。

另一个很好的例子是，支持性政策与企业家精神和创新的有力结合，催生了中国的绿色科技龙头企业。毕竟，“新受托人”的目的不是为了惩罚某些公司，而是要抓住那些推动积极变革前沿获得奖励的公司所带来的机会。  

预计到2030年，全球将投资200~300亿美元用于实现净零排放，其中大部分将在未来几年内投入，我们认为中国是这一趋势最重要的前沿阵地之一。同样，我们此时应该暂停一下，承认在实施和解读方面，各国经济和社会发展确实存在着明显的差异。

我们看到的第二个趋势是，今天人们对分散投资的含义有了更多认识。

2022年让全球许多投资者措手不及，因为这是有史以来第一个股票和债券的回报率都出现两位数下降的年份。事后看来，这有显而易见的原因，与疫情的干扰和由此产生的通胀压力，以及许多西方国家央行为应对而采取的大幅加息措施有关。关键是，过去的一年对许多投资者敲响了警钟，他们意识到，通过股票和债券的标准配置来“分散”投资组合可能是不够的。

在机构层面，也就是我们大部分业务所关注的地方，我们看到对另类投资的兴趣大增，比如私募信贷，甚至超越了通常复杂的机构产品：比如说像中型市场的私募信贷；而LP权益二级市场的发展也给私募市场带来一些流动性。对于那些在海外投资的中国投资者来说，我们看到同样的趋势正在上演。

今天，私募股权和私人信贷可能代表了一个特别有趣的机会。在其他发达市场，如美国，另类投资占养老金资产的30%左右，而公共养老基金往往是私募股权的最大投资者之一。在中国，这种情况还远远没有出现。然而，中国是全球最大的私募股权资本的目的地之一，仅次于美国。在未来几年，将这两种需求结合起来：一方面需要更多样化的回报，另一方面需要更多私募资本，这可能是帮助中国养老金实现其目标的另一种方式，同时支持实体经济的增长。

第三个是属于本地区的趋势，让我们非常兴奋的趋势，就是中国通过引入股票通和债券通，以及开放银行间债券市场，实现了跨境资本流动的自由化。这些都是重要的资本账户自由化工具，我们认为这有助于促进人民币国际化。过去几年持续的金融市场改革大大放宽了外国投资者的在岸市场的准入，这是提高人民币作为全球货币吸引力的因素之一。柏瑞以及我们的许多竞争对手，通过这些项目对在岸资产的需求不断增加。

最后，我想谈一谈金融知识和投资教育的重要性。

我强调这一点是因为，柏瑞投资认为像我们这样的资产管理公司越来越多地发挥着重要作用，确保任务实现 “端到端”的成功。  

即使资产管理者成功地实现了其直接客户：计划发起人或财富管理公司的目标，他们的客户如何成功地实现自己的退休目标，最终将在很大程度上、甚至更多地取决于他们如何管理自己接下来的财务生活。

而统计数字发人深省。

你可能会惊讶地发现，根据皮尤研究中心几年前的一项研究，54%的美国人每月花的钱超过他们的税后收入。在幕后，我们在零售财富管理领域的一些最大的同业机构——这些公司的业务建立在为大部分自助客户群提供低成本交易的基础上，正在巧妙地调整他们传递的信息，鼓励他们的客户听取值得信赖的顾问的建议。为什么？因为正如一项又一项的研究表明，如果任由他们自己决定，散户投资者很容易在资产价格高的时候买入，在不恰当的时候卖出。

我认为我们为推广养老金做更多工作。首先是开发有吸引力的商业养老金方案，包含一系列有税收优惠、期限长、回报稳定且有吸引力的产品，以刺激客户需求。还可以进一步利用我们多年来在行为金融方面所学到的知识来设计产品，迎合有利于推广养老金的行为。对于年轻一代，我们认为可以利用中国蓬勃发展的金融科技行业，比如采用游戏化的方式以提高人们的意识。并思考我们如何利用中国的网红群体，建设性地利用他们的影响力。

以上就是我们认为今天需要关注的几个趋势。

希望我们对今天的资产管理格局的双向观点给你留下了一些有意思的启发。希望大家能够理解为什么柏瑞投资对中国的未来充满信心。

谢谢。

Thank you. It’s a great honor for PineBridge to be included in this Forum. Let me first say that China isn’t just a like a second home to us. In many ways, it’s our first home.

PineBridge was the original asset management business of AIG, which, as you know, was initially established in Shanghai in the early 20th century. Over the years, as AIG built out its asset management business, our commitment to China, and the Asia region grew more broadly. This commitment was further strengthened over a decade ago, when we were bought by our parent company, Hong-Kong based, Pacific Century Group.

Today, this ownership structure, distinct from our publicly owned peers, allows us to leverage Pacific Century’s extensive Asian network to give our clients unique access to investment opportunities across Asia. We have been active from the beginning in stock connect and bond connect, an example of how we’ve introduced our Western clients to China, to drive connectivity of markets and foster mutual interest. And in the other direction, over half of our US$143 billion in AUM is sourced from the Asia Pacific region—among the highest for any global asset manager.

We are also about to celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the most dynamic onshore asset management joint ventures, between PineBridge and Huatai Securities, next year. Huatai PineBridge is one of the largest participants in China’s ETF asset class and was named the fastest-growing onshore joint venture in 2022.

We feel we know and understand China and Asia about as well as any investment firm both as a destination for and a source of capital. But we’re also very much a global money manager, with offices in New York, Tokyo, London, and elsewhere.

As a result, when we look at industry trends and plan our own strategies for growth, we’re always viewing them through this bifocal lens: through how these trends are likely to play out in shaping the industry in China, and vice versa. In President Xi JinPing’s December speech to the Central Economic Work Conference, he highlighted the importance of foreign investment. Asset management is part of that policy vision.

So that’s where I will focus my attention for the brief time I have with you today: giving you the benefit of this “two-way’ perspective.

Among the handful of trends we are focused on in the asset management industry today, is what we call the “new fiduciary”.

The traditional challenge for an investment fiduciary, as we all know, is to act in the interest of one’s client in balancing risk and return.  But today, there is a third dimension that is reaching the same level of importance: balancing risk and return with sustainability commitments. Many of the principles of sustainability find much in common with President Xi’s Global Civilization initiative. Today managers seek to promote such principles by internalizing the external costs, especially of climate change, into their usual calculation of financial performance, when assessing the long-term attractiveness of investments.

This can create a conundrum for the manager.  Because, as of today, there is still no generally accepted framework for the reporting and assessment of the material aspects of ESG that compares to the well-established standards for reporting and verifying financial performance.  

Still, we think the most successful managers will not be those who throw up their hands and wait for the best practices and data to catch up. Rather, it will be those who press ahead to help define what this “new” fiduciary duty entails, and actively engage with invested companies, other market participants, and policymakers to drive real alignment between risk/return aims, sustainability commitments, and client objectives.

Another great example is the robust combination of supportive policy and entrepreneurial spirit and innovation that has given rise to China’s green tech champions. The “new fiduciary” after all, isn’t only about penalizing companies. Its about capturing the opportunity of companies rewarded for driving the leading edge of positive change.  

With $20-30 billion projected to be invested globally in reaching net-zero emissions by 2030-much of it frontloaded into the next several years—we see China as one of this trend’s most important frontiers. By the same token, we should pause here and acknowledge,  the stark differences in economic and social development among countries, when it comes to implementation and interpretation.

The second trend we see is a growing understanding of what it means to be diversified today.

2022 came as a shock to many investors globally, as the first year ever when the returns for stocks and bonds both declined by double digits. In hindsight, there are obvious reasons for this, having to do with the unfortunate disruptions of the pandemic and resulting inflationary pressures and the dramatic interest rate hikes undertaken by many western central banks in response. The point is, the past year has been a wake-up call to many investors who now realize that portfolios “diversified” by standard allocations between stocks and bonds may not be enough.

At the institutional level, where most of our business is focused, we’re seeing a big increase in interest in alternatives, such as private credit, that go beyond even the usual sophisticated institutional offerings: in things like middle-market private credit, for example, and bringing some liquidity into privates with the development of secondary markets for LP interests. For those Chinese investors, investing off shore, we are seeing the same trend playing out.

Private equity and private credit could represent an especially interesting opportunity today. In other developed markets, like the US, alternatives make up about 30% of pension assets, and public pension funds are often among the largest investors in private equity.  In China, this is no where near the case. And yet, China is one of the largest destinations globally for private equity capital—second only to the US. In the coming years, marrying these two needs—for more diversified returns, on the one hand, and for more private capital, on the other—could be another way to help Chinese pensions meet their objectives, all the while supporting the growth of the real economy.

A third, more local trend, that we are very excited about, has been this country’s liberalization of cross-border capital flows through the introduction of stock connect and bond connect, and CIBM access. These are important capital account liberalization tools which we think helped to foster RMB internationalization. The continued financial market reforms in past years have significantly eased foreign investors’ access to the onshore markets and this is one of the factors increasing the RMBs attractiveness as a global currency.  PineBridge, and many of our competitors, have had a growing appetite for onshore assets through these programs.

Lastly, I would like to talk about the importance of financial literacy and investment education.

I highlight this because, at PineBridge, we think asset managers like ourselves increasingly have an important role to play in ensuring the success of their mandates “end to end”, if you will.  

Even if a manager succeeds in meeting the objectives of its direct client—the plan sponsor or wealth manager—how successful their clients are in meeting their own objectives for retirement will ultimately depend much, if not more, on how they manage the rest of their financial lives.

And the statistics are sobering.You may be surprised to learn that 54% of all Americans spend more each month than they make after taxes, according to a Pew study from a few years ago.  Behind the scenes, some of our largest peer institutions in the retail wealth management space—companies that built their businesses on the back of low-cost trading for a largely self-direct client base—are subtly adjusting their messaging to encourage their clients to seek out the advice of a trusted adviser.  Why?  Because, as study after study has shown, when left to their own devices, retail investors are prone to buying when asset prices are high and selling at inopportune times.

I think we can do more to help drive adoption of pensions. It starts with developing attractive commercial pension solutions supported by a broad range of products with tax incentives, long duration, and stable and appealing returns to stimulate customer demand.

But it also extends to using what we’ve learned over the years about behavioral finance to design products that cater to the behaviors that will facilitate adoption; for the younger generations, we think an opportunity is to leverage China’s already-burgeoning fintech industry—for example, using gamification, to improve awareness.  And to think about how we can harness China’s influencer community to put their influence toward a constructive use.

These are among the many trends that we feel are work considering today.

I hope our two-way perspective on today’s asset management landscape has left you some interesting ideas to think about. I also hope you can see why we, at PineBridge, are so excited about what the future holds for China. Thank you.