The APB Fund Selector Pulse Forum – Rethinking the Public-Private Balance in Credit Markets

Asian Private Banker (APB) co-hosted its Fund Selector Pulse Forum alongside sponsoring partner PGIM in a private room at the Ami restaurant in Hong Kong on October 22, 2025.

The highlight was a lunchtime roundtable discussion at which four of Asia’s leading private bank fund selectors put a spotlight on the growing convergence between public and private fixed income markets; the rebalancing of portfolios throughout 2025’s zigzagging market conditions and 2026; and the increasingly imaginative search for credit solutions in a falling rate environment.

Jessica Jones, managing director, head of Asia, PGIM’s Global Wealth, primed the discussion with a summary of the firm’s sixth annual Gatekeeper Pulse survey. Conducted between March and April 2025, a total of 210 gatekeepers around the globe shared their allocation plans, investment considerations and manager preferences in this year’s study.

They represented global financial institutions in Europe and Asia worth a combined US$31 trillion in assets under management, with each institution managing a minimum of US$1 billion. A total of 60 selectors participated in Asia, 30 from Hong Kong and 30 from Singapore.

Notable conclusions included a pronounced bullishness for bonds. “The numbers tell the story,” said Jones, “43% of gatekeepers expect higher returns from public fixed income, and 37% say they will increase allocation to the asset class in the next year. Within Asia, 65% and 61% of gatekeepers will increase allocations to government bonds and investment grade credit, respectively. There’s a similar trend in private credit, with Asia-based gatekeepers in particular intending to increase exposure and predicting higher returns from the asset class in the same period.”

Jessica Jones
managing director, head of Asia, PGIM’s Global Wealth

In summary, she added, gatekeepers in the survey predicted a weaker macro outlook driving return expectations lower; plans were clearly there to increase allocations to private markets; and, with 80% of them expecting increased volatility in the year ahead, there would be an associated stronger demand for more risk-minded managers.

“Heightened geopolitical risk, subpar economic growth and the potential for reinflation emerged as the key concerns of the gatekeepers,” she said. The overriding impacts on gatekeepers’ investment priorities, she said, were thus: “defensive positioning, diversification and differentiated alpha opportunities”.

The roundtable’s selectors embraced these findings and were keen to expand and elaborate upon them. They were certainly clear that client interest in and allocations to alternatives will remain an abiding theme. Hedge funds, they further explained, were becoming a particular focus of attention as they declared them the rebound kings of the past 12 months in terms of asset class preferences.

The participants also explored the many nuances of manager selection in the public and private credit markets. Selectors emphasised the need for fixed income managers of scale, multi-cycle experience and global reach. This need was heightened, they said, by prevailing market conditions overlaid by persistent volatility, a declining rate environment and a period of rising default risk exemplified by the recent headline failures of two notable asset-backed securities in the United States.

They keenly articulated where the search for new risk-mitigated solutions is now taking them. While they expressed a preference to stay closer to the higher end of the credit spectrum, they all agreed that destinations outside the US were becoming increasingly popular both for reallocations and new capital deployment. And among the various products they debated with fervour were securitised – particularly CLO – strategies, multi-sector solutions and opportunistic credit hedge funds.

Participants (alphabetically)

Jessica Jones, managing director, head of Asia, PGIM’s Global Wealth
Julie Koo, managing director, head of partnerships and relationship management, Citi Global Wealth Investment
Lina Lim, regional and Hong Kong head of discretionary and funds, Asia Pacific, wealth and premier solutions, HSBC
Stephen Sheung, head of alternative investments & managed solutions, investment solutions group Hong Kong, Bank of Singapore
Connie Sin, head of funds & alternatives, international wealth management, Nomura