Institutional Asset Management in Asia 2021
Reassessing the Fundamentals
Identify Opportunities in Asia’s Institutional Markets
- Analyze active versus passive investing
- Evaluate alternative strategies and co-investments
- Learn the know-how for risk management
- Identify the impact of regulatory developments on portfolio construction
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Manni Huang
Associate Director, Account Management, Asia
- Boston HQ +1 617.437.0084
- Singapore +65 6994 1022
- London +44 20 7645 9040
Summary
This annual report sizes and identifies the opportunities in Asia’s institutional markets, covering pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, central banks, insurers, government-linked institutions, and other key asset owners in Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Singapore. It discusses institutional asset owners’ investment concerns and priorities, portfolio allocations and new strategies, outsourcing, external manager selection, and investment plans.
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A Note from the Author
Asian Institutions Shift Portfolio Allocations in Response to COVID-19

Ken Yap, CFA
Managing Director, Asia
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Ken Yap, CFA
Managing Director, Asia
Ken Yap is managing director of Cerulli’s Asia Pacific office. He oversees Cerulli’s business development strategy and research initiatives in the region. For more than 20 years, Ken has worked with asset managers, distributors, and financial institutions, identifying expansion opportunities with his deep knowledge of the market. He specializes in product development and market entry strategies into Asia’s established and emerging markets.
Prior to leading the Singapore office, Ken covered local and global asset management and distribution trends in Cerulli’s London and Boston offices. Before joining Cerulli, Ken was a consultant at Analysys’ Cambridge office in the U.K.
Full biography here.
The pandemic has impacted the way Asian institutions manage their portfolios. Institutional investors have been reducing their fixed-income exposure while increasing allocations to overseas assets, equities, and alternative investments in search of returns. More specifically, they are increasingly evaluating allocations to growth sectors that are expected to gain from long-term structural changes, such as digitalization and sustainable investing.
According to our research, there are several approaches institutions believe will optimize portfolio returns, the first being effective risk management (69%), followed by the inclusion of factor-based investing into portfolios (47%), having the right investment scale (45.2%), and integration of database and technology (43.8%). Asian institutions are prioritizing the quality of companies, low volatility, and blending growth and value investments to build portfolios that are resilient and have greater flexibility to respond to unanticipated events. With aims to guard their portfolios against external shocks, integration of sustainability considerations is gaining traction among institutions, and of growing importance during the manager selection process for knowledge transfer.
Managers seeking to gain institutional mandates will need to prove their capabilities, agility, and dynamic portfolio management. Our report, Institutional Asset Management in Asia: Reassessing the Fundamentals, offers asset managers a look into the challenges ahead in the institutional space, and opportunities available to managers seeking to gain mandate wins.
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