Winnersrationale

Increasing inflationary pressure accompanied by volatility in the market in 2021 renewed private banks’ interest in investing in real assets worldwide for their ability to generate steady income during times of rising prices. However, real estate or infrastructure projects usually require large investments and long investment horizons.

To lower the threshold of investment, DWS’ liquid real assets platform offers access to these assets via exchange-traded real estate and infrastructure securities, as well as to commodities in the form of stocks and direct investments via futures. DWS’ liquid real assets platform is billed as the “crown jewel” of the firm’s investment offerings and has an AUM of around US$19 billion, with most of the assets invested in infrastructure and real estate securities.

In the awarded category, DWS showcased to the panel its Invest Global Real Estate Securities and Invest Global Infrastructure Securities strategies, each demonstrating a proven and long-term track record of generating alpha consistently for investors during vastly different economic regimes and capital market environments. In 2021, the asset manager expanded its distribution network among private banks in Asia and recorded a decent net inflow of investments into both real asset funds. Since 85-95% of the income of the businesses invested in by the infrastructure fund is inflation-linked, the firm observed a stable level of interest in the past few years and a particularly good inflow in 2021 due to inflation concerns among private bankers.

The investment philosophy of the infrastructure securities fund is to maximise investment efficiency and invest in pure-play infrastructure companies, which are those that invest in infrastructure assets that are able to generate stable, predictable, and long-term cash flows without sacrificing liquidity. In particular, the leading contributor of this fund in 2021 is its overweight to energy infrastructure, as sharply rising commodity prices, reopening activity and strong corporate earnings helped to propel the subsector sharply higher. The conviction stemmed from the asset manager’s proprietary macroframework, combined with attractive valuations and accelerating fundamentals for those subsectors tied to the economic reopening.

DWS Investments is Asian Private Banker’s Best Fund Provider – Real Assets for 2022.