Relative (to benchmark) mandates

In our relative mandates the customer chooses a benchmark for their investments – and we endeavour to deliver an excess return relative to this benchmark. We do this through strong diversification, dynamic asset allocation (under and overweight vs. benchmark) and a thorough selection process for the individual investment components in the portfolios.

Our underlying belief is that we as asset managers can generate an excess return for customers via strategic and tactical allocations in our customers’ portfolios, with this ongoing allocation based on a fundamental analysis of the macro-economy and the financial markets. We employ quantitative models to guide us, but all investment decisions are qualitative and made by our experienced strategy team.

Precise risk management is a key element of our portfolio solutions. In our own advanced in-house risk model we, for example, perform a re-sampling of historical return data to simulate the most likely future portfolio returns and worst-case scenarios. In our opinion, this provides a solid empirical foundation for constructing portfolios with the best possible risk diversification.

When putting together portfolios we use components from both internal and external managers, and we combine investment components with active or passive management, depending on where we assess that active managers can create value in the form of an excess return.

We further supplement actively and passively managed investment components with quantitative strategies such as smart beta strategies, while customers can also opt to include alternative investments, such as hedge funds, as part of the investment universe. We are firmly convinced that alternative investments can further increase risk diversification and portfolio robustness, and thus increase the risk-adjusted returns.