WHEN: Today, Wednesday, September 29th
WHERE: CNBC Delivering Alpha Conference
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC EXCLUSIVE interview with Shundrawn Thomas, Northern Trust Asset Management President, and Yie-Hsin Hung, New York Life Investment Management CEO, from the CNBC Delivering Alpha Conference, which took place on Wednesday, September 29th.
Mandatory credit: CNBC Delivering Alpha Conference.
THOMAS ON DEMOCRATIZATION
I'm one of those people that I think, more competition is good. And so, whenever we see control shift, and we see access change, it means the industry in a sense becomes attractive to more players. We see new incumbents that drive, even those of us who are established in the industry, to be more innovative, we see business models change, But the bottom line of that is it means that there's going to be a better and a wider range of investment solutions to all classes of investors at lower price points.
HUNG ON RATES AND INFLATION
our own view is that interest rates and inflation are going to be persistent levels that are above what we saw pre-pandemic. It is going to continue to cause volatility in the market which we've been experiencing over these weeks and months, but we're similarly the same view as Shundrawn in terms of investors staying focus and remaining invested but perhaps starting to adjust their portfolio allocations, whereas growth and capital appreciation really has been the name of the game and more of a beta play to focus more on active management to think about allocating perhaps to other categories that provide more income
THOMAS ON RISK ASSETS
we continue to be constructive on risk assets. Now, again, the lens that we look through is, we're a long-term investor, and we're looking at this over longer cycles… we're not confused about the near-term risk of inflation and things like that. But again, we've main constructive on the market, and we look at that as an opportunity if we see any meaningful sell off so it's so in the current time period.
HUNG ON INFRASTRUCTURE
We're really very interested in trade by infrastructure both listed infrastructure as well as private infrastructure. We know this is obviously a huge topic in Washington. And as we think about, you know, the need for long term income. This is an asset class that is quite long in nature, and also has inflation characteristics built in, as well as when you know you think about renewable energy focus around reinvesting in our infrastructure in this country. We're very excited about that as a potential place to place money.
THOMAS ON LEADERSHIP CULTURE
one of our most important tools as leaders in the industry is to use our voice. And so when we change the nature of the dialogue in our organization we advance the culture and for far too long, issues of race and diversity and the like, have been those proverbial third rails now we've seen a shift in that in the last 18 months, but we've got to continue to drive that because that's how we shape culture, we do it on purpose, not on accident.
THOMAS ON DIGITIZATION
one of the things we've learned through our own experience, is we're expanding actually who we touch through our digital engagement, it sort of forced us out of traditional patterns, and then expanded that so that means that not only are we getting a younger demographic, we're getting a more diverse demographic, here's the upshot of that as well. When we engage with them digitally, our ability to use what used to be latent data to actually inform insights and help us more personalize and better think about our value proposition is powerful.
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