This is a sponsored advertorial from Schroders.

In a world where passive funds dominate headlines, investors might ask: Does human insight and judgment still have an active role to play in investment? 

A case in point is global equities, an asset class where passive vehicles previously outperformed active funds. Now, after years of narrow leadership, market drivers are broadening. This shift increases the potential for active managers investing globally in equities to add value across a broader range of sectors and stocks. When markets disproportionally reward the biggest names, taking an active management approach can better uncover value in overlooked areas.

In contrast, market-cap weighted indices are sub-optimal and heavily, uncomfortably dependent on a small number of stocks in narrowly defined areas of the market, even when expectations have reached a new high. 

Perspectives for fixed income and multi-asset investments

Turning to fixed income, there are a number of alpha levers an active investor can pull to navigate the complexity – including rotation across sub-segments of the asset class, sector, issue selection and duration, with the goal of adding solid alpha while crucially avoiding “fallen angels”. 

Active management cannot be emphasised enough in fixed income investing, and calibrated deviation from a benchmark can offer increased diversification and greater opportunities to capture mis-priced bonds globally – in line with the process undertaken for our Global Credit Income suite of strategies.

Static asset allocation frameworks like traditional 60/40 portfolios are sub-optimal in today’s heightened inflation environment, leaving investors overexposed to concentrated risks without effective diversifiers in their funds, especially if and when 2022 were to repeat itself. 

Contrastingly, actively managed investment strategies offer the flexibility and a bottom-up approach to reallocate capital in response to changing market regimes, macroeconomic shocks, or geopolitical developments – adjusting both amongst and within asset classes to manage risk and capture returns other approaches might miss.  

From a multi-asset investment lens, we see the best opportunities where both prices and expectations are lower, or growth prospects are overlooked, to gain exposure to stable income and potential capital growth across geographies. 

All of these factors are considered through the lens of the client’s objectives and the investment outcomes that might result.

Investors turn to active management to navigate market complexity

Investors are also showing confidence in the merits of active asset management. On a macro level, they see the approach as better suited to navigating market complexity successfully than a passive index-tracking route (on a micro, vehicle level) – our latest Schroders Global Investor Survey of institutional investors and wealth managers has found. 

Perceived benefits include the ability to capture returns wherever they arise and achieving portfolio resilience. Four in five institutional investors and gatekeepers (82%) surveyed in Asia Pacific are confident active management can deliver value in the new investment landscape, higher than the global average of 75%. In June 2025, 83% of respondents in the region intend to increase their exposure to active management over the next 12 months. 

Which factors have contributed to your confidence that active management can deliver value? Responses from Asia Pacific (% Rank 1 + 2 + 3).

All the benefits demonstrated by active management are even more prominent when we deliberately blend public and private assets in a mixed-asset portfolio.  Semi-liquid private asset funds, e.g., global private equity fund, infrastructure and real estate debt funds, etc, can bring attractive fund features that would not be achieved by a pure public asset investment universe. This further extends the aesthetics of active management. 

A changing market landscape presents compelling opportunities to underscore the benefits of active management and for investors to embrace them.

Learn more: What we do | Schroders. 

This is a sponsored advertorial from Schroders.