CII’s Insurance & Longevity Investing Forum considers the whole of the portfolio. It’s investment focused, with consideration of other longevity factors. Themes to be covered, as raised by our Advisory Committee, include:

• Capital efficiency over the middle ground: Return targets on annuity-style liabilities are hard to meet efficiently from public credit, which sits in the capital-inefficient middle of the risk spectrum. The preferred design pairs highly capital-efficient strategies with very low-risk assets, such as short-dated senior secured real asset debt.

• Resilience through non-traditional diversifiers: Public credit carries meaningful correlation to broader risk assets in a stress scenario. A steady rotation is under way into relative value, multi-strategy and absolute return approaches (hedge funds), insurance-linked securities and selective asset-backed finance, alongside rising interest in convexity and deliberate currency positioning.

• Building out annuity products: Government focus on retirement income is pushing investment teams, including at insurers without an existing annuity or life book, to develop products and the investment strategies needed to support them. The investment capability required includes specialist asset-backed lending expertise that most fixed income managers don't hold in-house.

• Risk appetite amid tight spreads: Spreads are seen as too tight against return targets to sit solely in investment grade. Approaches range from extending selectively while holding capital in reserve to add risk if spreads widen, to avoiding listed equities and public credit in favour of private credit and low-correlation strategies.

• Fewer managers, deeper relationships: Concentrated manager sets are being weighed against multi-manager structures, with fit on covenants, capital return timing and after-tax outcomes ahead of style diversity, and monthly rather than annual engagement.

Who should attend: CIOs and Heads of Strategy from insurers and super funds active in retirement income