Building on the findings of our recently launched Global Asset Manager Peer Study 2026, and in collaboration with CAIA Association, we have produced a new paper: An expanding mandate | A systems-level framework for asset management.
The two authors, Andrea Caloisi, Researcher at Thinking Ahead, and Aaron Filbeck, Managing Director, Content & Community Strategy at CAIA Association, dive into some of the paper’s key findings and offer a call to action for the asset management industry.
1. What is the big idea at the heart of this paper and why now?
It’s a very knotty subject, so let me describe it through the “empty world” and “full world” framing. An empty world is one where the human economy is still small relative to the biosphere, so capital is the scarce factor and nature is effectively abundant. A full world is one where the economy has grown so large and complex that nature has itself become the binding constraint.
In this paper we argue that, on balance, the investment industry remains anchored in empty world logic, even though we now inhabit a full one.
That is why we call for a shift to system-level investing: not just optimising parts (asset classes, portfolios, even hyperspecialised careers) but also understanding and shaping the system that now inevitably determines long-term outcomes.
Hence the central idea of expanding current investment mandates. In a full world, those investors who miss the chance to think in systems – and to exercise systemic purpose – may be those who miss the very conditions of survival.
2. What new perspective on the role of asset managers do you hope readers take away from this paper?
The paper reframes asset managers as participants and shapers within the system, rather than external observers. Their role today should extend beyond generating returns to shaping the conditions under which those returns remain possible – through capital allocation, stewardship, and engagement. Again, this implies a broader mandate: integrating system awareness, purpose, and real-world impact into investment practice, and recognising that financial outcomes and systemic outcomes are fundamentally interconnected over the long term.
In the paper, we call on managers to adapt their organisational design, talent pipeline, and operating models – balancing technical expertise with bridge-building, systems navigation, and sense-making. This equips teams to convert complexity into consistently high-quality decisions and resilient outcomes, reflecting a new conception of organisational effectiveness/edge, and fit for a new world.
3. The paper points to a number of forces reshaping asset management. Which of those shifts do you think firms are still underestimating?
The forces themselves are actually well identified, at least thematically. As you’ll see in the paper, the peer study data shows managers broadly agreeing on what’s coming… geopolitics, AI, demographics, private markets. What’s being underestimated is whether the industry is organisationally built to act on these as interconnected issues, especially when they’re hitting at the same time and impacting one another.
Part of what makes this difficult is that these forces don’t operate independently. Demographic decline reshapes labour markets, which shapes fiscal capacity, which shapes the geopolitical leverage of aging economies. AI accelerates productivity concentration, which feeds into inequality, which puts pressure on the social contracts that underpin stable capital markets. Climate risk reprices real assets, which interacts with sovereign debt capacity, which impacts demographics and inequality. None of that moves in a straight line. These are features of a connected system, and the interactions between them are where the real risk lives.
That non-linearity is what compounds the underestimation most. Most of these dynamics don’t move in ways that traditional forecasting models can track. Feedback loops, tipping points, cascading effects are not really factored into the industry’s approach to risk management. Our playbooks and toolkits were designed to quantify risk, not navigate conditions where the distribution of outcomes itself is unstable.
Each force is visible in isolation. The connectivity between them is what we’re missing.
4. What change are you advocating for so that asset managers don’t get left behind?
The paper’s call to action is focused on how organisations need to change. CAIA is asking asset managers to widen the mandate, rebuild teams for systems thinking, and bring the macro inside the investment process. This won’t happen overnight, but we believe it will be necessary over the next several years. People will need to think outside their silos, and firms will need to build teams with diverse backgrounds, skillsets, and professional development that can collectively hold a greater awareness of interconnected risk.
AI makes the urgency harder to ignore. It’s compressing the timelines on which competitive advantages are built and destroyed across every sector, and it’s changing the nature of analytical work itself.
The asset owner community has already started making this turn. The most sophisticated long-term investors have moved away from benchmark-relative mandates toward goals-based frameworks and, increasingly, the Total Portfolio Approach. That shift reflects a broader definition of what success looks like, one that accounts for the system the capital operates in, not just the return it generates. Asset managers need to make the same move. As asset owners continue to redefine their mandates, the managers who have already done the organizational work will be the ones best positioned to serve them.
The full paper launches on Wednesday 17 June.
