Adopting AllianceBernstein's (AB's) equity risk-management overlay strategy will boost risk-adjusted returns for AustSafe Super members, the fund's chief executive, Craig Stevens believes.
The industry fund announced the decision to use the AB Factor Risk Completion strategy, to improve risk-adjusted returns without reducing the potential to generate alpha.
"By allocating a proportion of our international equities exposure to this overlay strategy, we believe we can improve the management of our equity portfolio without diluting conviction in the underlying investment managers or reducing the return sources we wish to target," Stevens said.
AB chief executive, Australia, Jen Driscoll, said the service applies a disciplined quantitative process combining AB's proprietary risk and alpha models, aiming to reduce the impact of unintended common exposures and asset crowding, and to improve the balance of pay-offs across time-horizons by diversifying risk in a capital-efficient way.
ASIC has warned that practices across the $200 billion private credit market are inconsistent and, in some cases, require serious improvement.
A surge in electricity prices has driven the monthly Consumer Price Index to its highest level in a year, exceeding forecasts.
Infrastructure well-positioned to hedge against global uncertainty, says investment chief.
The fund manager remains positive on the outlook for gold and believes ongoing market volatility will provide opportunities to acquire small-cap stocks in promising sectors.