image image

    About Insight

    About Insight

    Your goal. Our expertise.

    Not satisfied that client needs were being properly met by asset managers, we chose a different approach.

    Our mission is to offer investors a different approach that prioritises the certainty of meeting their chosen objectives.

    We have developed core risk management and fixed income capabilities focused on this goal, managed by a wide team of investment and solutions experts.

    Introduction to Insight

    image
    Find out more here
    200 kb

    Insight has a reputation for high quality, outcome-oriented investment solutions and the highest standards of service.

    For a generation, Insight has partnered with clients to address the tough problems, introducing leading-edge thinking and innovation to help achieve their goals.

    Abdallah Nauphal, CEO

    What makes Insight different?

    • carousel image overlay
      carousel image1

      Focus on client outcomes

    • carousel overlay
      carousel image2

      Emphasis on certainty, not risk

    • carousel overlay
      carousel image3

      Capabilities to meet specific client needs

    • carousel overlay
      carousel image4

      Commitment to our clients’ interests

    • carousel overlay
      carousel image5

      Prioritise high-quality investment solutions and service

    • We recognise that our clients are investing for a specific purpose.

      Whether we are managing tailored strategies or pooled funds, we focus on achieving a clear, defined outcome.

    • We refrain from using forecast-based investment models as the real world is uncertain. Instead, we focus on investment strategies that offer higher certainty in attaining our clients’ desired outcomes.

      We also aim to build flexible and resilient portfolios that help our clients navigate future shocks.

    • We build our capabilities in response to the sophisticated needs of our clients, not to create standalone products.

      We develop further expertise as clients’ needs evolve, often questioning conventional thinking and innovating to meet new challenges.

    • Our clients have ongoing access to multiple experts, from portfolio managers and actuaries to solutions designers and lawyers at every step of their journey.

      Our primary objective is an unwavering focus on quality of performance and quality of client service. This means doing the hard things, such as extra research, tailored portfolios and bespoke reporting.

      We aim to influence policymakers and regulatory bodies, seeking to address systemic risks to protect client interests.

    • We aim to focus only on where we believe we can deliver an edge: our business primarily focuses on risk management and fixed income strategies.

      Our investment and solutions specialists partner with our clients to better understand their needs and provide them with the tools and professional education they need for their investment journey.

    Our history of shaping the solutions industry

    1. 2003
    2. 2004
    3. 2005
    4. 2006
    5. 2008
    6. 2009
    7. 2011
    8. 2012
    9. 2015
    10. 2016
    11. 2017
    12. 2018
    13. 2019
    14. 2020
    15. 2021
    16. 2022
    17. 2023
    18. 2024
      • Developed the Insight business to focus on managing risk for pension plans, looking beyond simple bond exposure to develop more precise and efficient forms of liability-driven investment (LDI)
      • Pioneered use of interest rate and inflation derivative strategies to hedge liability risks, reducing the funded status volatility for pension plans
      • Developed institutional-quality absolute return fixed income strategies for wholesale market to better align client returns with their target outcomes
      • Applied ‘intelligent’ hedge management techniques to identify arbitrage opportunities between physical and derivative hedge instruments, helping clients to maintain the integrity of their hedges at a lower cost
      • Founding signatory to UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)
      • Introduced sophisticated pooled funds to help pension plans of all sizes to hedge interest rate and inflation risks more precisely
      • Introduced equity, credit, currency and property overlays to help clients utilize capital more efficiently to manage risk and gain market exposure
      • Launched buy-and-maintain approach to credit, helping clients meet specific yield, duration and credit quality objectives with limited turnover and transaction costs
      • Proactive and in-depth engagement with policymakers and other stakeholders led to an exemption for pension plans from clearing derivatives under major European regulations – helping plans avoid unnecessary costs and potential loss of value effectively and prudently
      • Pioneered proprietary system to analyse all available derivatives to support construction of efficient liability hedges, opening up more investment options for clients
      • Expanded our LDI offering by introducing pooled funds that seek to offer a liability hedge for pension plans of all sizes, expanding access to our market-leading capabilities
      • Introduced a proprietary system to analyze all available fixed income and derivative instruments to support solutions design, able to incorporate a wide range of client-specific requirements to support management of exposures across the whole portfolio

       

      • Led the market in offering access to secured finance assets: less-crowded and high quality debt investments that offer a premium above corporate debt by providing access to the specialist capabilities to unlock the complexity premium
      • First to offer a government liquidity solution using non-bank repo, providing cash investors the potential for security without compromising on liquidity and yield relative to prime money market funds – and also offering pension plans a new source of liquidity
      • Engaged extensively on issues around the transition from risk-free rates such as LIBOR, interacting with policymakers and stakeholders, seeking to ensure a viable long-term solution for the wider market and a smooth transition for our clients
      • Pioneered self-managed de-risking models to help plans replicate the characteristics of insurance risk transfer contacts without the need to pay a premium, helping them to achieve their endgame more targets with greater certainty
      • Introduced new tools to help pension plans measure and manage longevity risk
      • Helped pension plans of all sizes to manage their liquidity requirements with pooled funds focused on maturing credit investments
      • Partnered with clients to develop strategies with impact and sustainability targets to help them better integrate ESG risks in their portfolios
      • Focused on helping clients assess their liquidity needs, considering how to adapt their liquidity allocations to help maximize the certainty of achieving their target outcome
      • Introduced the industry’s first maturing fixed income benchmarks to support liquidity management using cashflow-driven investing (CDI) solutions
      • Partnered with multiple clients to manage truly integrated solutions across their plan – enabling them to holistically address more factors that influence their investment journey, use assets efficiently for multiple purposes, and balance competing needs more effectively
      • Introduced proprietary ESG ratings, Prime, incorporating multiple data sources and our analysts’ views in seeking to resolve gaps and inconsistencies in widely available ESG data, and to support it with our own expert analysis
      • Launched a major industry-wide engagement in the UK, encouraging stakeholders to respond to proposed changes to inflation measures – the proposals could have a negative impact on pensioners’ future retirement income and how pension plans hedge inflation risks
      • We substantially expanded our responsible investment policy, to spell out in detail the six principles that guide our business and investment approach. 
      • Introduced Efficient Beta (2005), US Municipals (1987) and Stable Value (1983) capabilities as part of the transition of fixed income teams from Mellon Investments
      • Introduced the ability to use corporate bond allocations as collateral for pension scheme clients’ liability hedges, effectively widening their collateral pool and thereby helping them improve their resilience
      • We developed a new approach to embed a net-zero by 2050 target within some of our Responsible Horizons investment strategies, helping investors who wish to place sustainability considerations at the heart of their investment allocations.
      • Insight developed a new approach to help UK defined benefit pension schemes with material corporate bond allocations to improve the accuracy of their inflation hedges, through pooled corporate bond portfolios with an inflation overlay.
      • We developed an enhanced approach to buy-and-maintain strategies to enable clients to tailor their portfolios using a wide range of high-quality public and private fixed income assets.
    image image

    Investing responsibly

    Investing responsibly

    For Insight, responsible investment is about value and values. We believe all risks, including environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks, can affect the value of an investment.

    We analyse ESG issues alongside other investment risks and, where appropriate, engage with companies and governments to better understand all of the issues that affect them.

    Read more

    Back to top