Three-quarters of institutional investors plan to increase their allocations to real assets, delegates discovered at JP Morgan’s annual Global Real Assets conference in New York.
JP Morgan polled 155 investors and found that 75% planned to up their allocations over the next five years by adding new forms of real assets to their existing real estate portfolios.
“We’re seeing investor interest in real assets spike,” said Bernie McNamara, head of global real assets client strategy and omni solutions at JP Morgan Asset Management.
The investors surveyed represented 130 institutions from several countries, including the US, Japan, Australia and Korea, with more than $4trn in total investable assets.
Of those, 18% of attending investors already allocate more than 15% of their total portfolio to real assets, and 51% currently allocate 7% to 15% of their total portfolio to real assets.
In its latest report on US infrastructure, Preqin found that 66% of US-based infrastructure investors were below their target allocation to the asset class as of May.
The growing diversity of the real assets markets is attracting institutions that are grappling with equity market volatility and “inadequate” bond yields, McNamara said, with 41% of attending investors currently viewing infrastructure as “the most interesting real asset investment opportunity to add to a domestic core real estate allocation.”
