InsuranceAUM.com Stewart Foley

Welcome to another edition of the InsuranceAUM.com Podcast. We are insurance asset management nerds here, me and our guest today. We're talking about insurance asset management with Jeffrey Hobbs CFA, head of Insurance Portfolio Management at Voya. 

Here’s part of the conversation between Karissa, Sarah, and Stewart:

Karissa:

It’s truly bespoke. If a lender has extremely long duration needs, we can find that for them. Right now, it’s really hard to find that because of what’s going on in the market with interest rates, everybody wants short. However, if a lender needs three- to five-year duration, that’s available as well.

Stewart:

That’s cool. And so just so everyone’s aware, Aegon Asset Management is part of Aegon, which is a massive insurance company. And Transamerica here in the US is part of that as well. Can you remind me and our listeners of the relationship between Aegon Asset Management and Transamerica on the commercial mortgage loan side? And just kind of set the stage for the rest of the podcast in terms of how you work together.

Karissa:

Sure. We began investing for them about 40 years ago, and we currently have a portfolio of about $11 billion on our general account. We also manage assets for third party investors, and we have about a $3 billion that we’re managing for them.1 Typical loan sizes are around $15 million with a range of 3 to 50 million depending on the size of the insurer. We invest across all major sectors, primary, secondary, and tertiary markets. We’re headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa so we understand the nuances that are outside the top 100s. We’ve historically and continued to be an active investor in those markets when opportunities present themselves.

Stewart:

Yeah, it’s funny, I had a friend who covered your shop in Cedar Rapids from Chicago years and years ago. I have fond memories of that area. So Karissa, a lot has changed in the market environment in the last two years in this space. You just referred to it a moment ago. And for all asset classes, but in particular, how has CML origination and allocation been affected?

Welcome to another edition of the InsuranceAUM.com podcast. To the home of the smartest investors on Earth, the insurance investment community. I'm very happy to be joined today by Kris Kraus, Portfolio Manager and Co-head of Specialty Finance at PIMCO, and today we're going to be talking about asset-backed lending and specialty finance.

Welcome to another edition of the InsuranceAUM.com podcast. We're going to be talking about insurance regulation. We are joined by none other than the regulatory savant Mr. Amnon Levy, who is the founder and CEO of Bridgeway Analytics, and we are joined today by Commissioner Nathan Houdek.

Today's topic is straight-up fixed income and yield curve and Fed policy and implications. I couldn't be happier to be joined by Sam Kaplan, CFA, managing director and portfolio manager at Jennison Associates.

We're joined today by Martin Barnwell, who's the investment director on the commercial real estate lending team at abrdn