Insight has managed global aggregate bond strategies for many years and has outperformed the benchmark index with a high degree of consistency. Achieving and maintaining that success requires extensive portfolio management and risk management capabilities, particularly given the breadth of the opportunity set.
Meeting the challenge of achieving outperformance across a broad market universe
Shifting economic and inflationary conditions have made considerable year-on-year variability in returns for global aggregate bond markets commonplace. Consistently outperforming what is arguably the world’s premier fixed income index across periods of rising and falling prices, as well as heightened volatility, is widely regarded as a hallmark of a successful active manager.
No reliance on rising market to generate alpha
Insight’s long-standing investment process has helped its global aggregate bond strategy achieve a notable track record since the inception of the strategy in May 2015. As Figure 1 demonstrates, Insight’s approach has delivered positive active returns gross of fees against the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index in eight of the nine calendar years since inception (2016-2024 inclusive). The market itself has experienced some periods of elevated volatility throughout that period created by, among other things, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the inflation surge and its subsequent retracement
Figure 1: Success in rising and falling markets – outperformance in eight of nine calendar years1
Investing for outperformance should not depend on your timing
Being capable of generating positive alpha in a consistent manner over the long term means it is not necessary to time an investment hoping to capture an upswing in a manager’s fortunes. The consistency of the alpha Insight has achieved can also be seen in Figure 2. It shows the track record of gains against the benchmark index, gross of fees, across a range of commonly monitored time periods since the strategy began.
Figure 2: Global aggregate strategy performance versus benchmark1
What makes insight different for global aggregate?
People and process
We believe there are a combination of features which mean Insight and its process represents a distinct and valuable capability in the active global aggregate market.
Specialised global fixed income manager
Having a singular focus on fixed income means the management team does not face the same distractions of what driving influences may be having on other asset classes that managers incorporating other asset classes do. This can help maintain the purity in the use of tools for seeking active returns.
Global, not local, platform
Insight’s fixed income management team is globally spread with managers and analysts based in Europe and across time zones in the US. This allows the team to take a truly global view more easily, generating ideas from participants “on the ground”. Being able to observe market news and trends in situ may be beneficial to a global strategy rather than confining the investment perspective to observation from a single geographic source.
Long-standing consistent investment process designed to seek delivery of consistent alpha
Insight aims to apply its “Units of Risk” toolkit to ensure that the risk introduced from positions taken appropriately and accurately reflects the strength of the opinion and the expected combination of risk and return that the position will introduce. The process incorporates an intelligent landmine checklist to help identify and avoid unnecessary risk from individual issuers and issues.
Strategy focus
Strategy is managed as a whole without sleeving allocations
While lead management sits in London and Boston, other teams can contribute fully to alpha generation with top-down and bottom-up ideas. We can also make use of the real-time flow of intelligence from and across all major markets.
Opportunistic and thoughtful use of off benchmark positions
Insight only seeks to apply off benchmark positions when we have identified a clear, attractive and appropriate alpha opportunity. It does not believe that the best way to improve risk-adjusted returns involves the use of structural positions in off benchmark assets.
Breadth of positive performance contributors
Insight’s government and credit capabilities has delivered alpha from a broad range of sources. the managers seek attractive opportunities in credit strategy, both in credit and sector selection and security selection.
The process does not confine seeking returns from, or concentrate risk in, from any single source. Instead, the managers aim at generating alpha by taking active positions across a wide range of sources including, credit decisions, identifying opportunities across credit markets, such as investment grade and securitised credit or high yield. Credit decisions also capture security selection of attractive individual issuers. Those decisions are then underpinned by regular contributions from developed market government bonds and emerging markets, where opportunities present themselves. From time to time, opportunities may be considered worthy in other areas such as inflation of currencies. Below, Figure 3 shows Insight’s long-term performance attribution track record.
Figure 3: Attribution of excess returns versus benchmark since inception (% annualised)2
Ability to regularly produce alpha from major sources of returns
Not only has there been a broad-based delivery of alpha, but there has also been a noteworthy general reliability of achieving positive contribution from each factor over the years, as the table below shows.
Table 1: Key sources of return generating alpha reliably over time2
| Credit decisions | Rates & Currency | Strategy total | |
| Number of years of positive contribution (out of 9) | 8 | 6 | 8 |
| Most positive annual contribution | 2.54% | 1.93% | 2.92% |
| Most negative annual contribution | -0.11% | -0.70% | -0.39% |
Overall, Insight has achieved success in generating positive alpha more often than not across the main sources of alpha that it targets and positive contributions to returns relative to the benchmark for each year have comfortably outnumbered instances where they detracted. At least one of the relative returns contributions from credit decisions or rates and currency has been positive every calendar year since 2016.
Having a robust and deliberate investment process has been an essential element as Insight has built the strategy’s track record. The managers have been able to add value from both sides of a global aggregate mandate, credit and rates, from where they typically aim to focus the majority of their energy on sourcing alpha. Taking positions in areas such as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and currencies is more opportunistic as managers identify what they believe is attractive value. .
Externally affirmed for quality and service
Insight’s specialist fixed income capability has underpinned Insight’s success in winning a range of independent awards and commendations.
- In 2025, Insight was ranked in first place for Overall Fixed Income Quality (Investment Quality and Service Quality) by UK Investment Consultants
- Insight has been ranked in first place for Overall Fixed Income Quality in 10 of the last 12 years with UK Investment Consultants
- Insight has been ranked in the top decile for Overall Fixed Income Quality in every year for 12 years by UK Investment Consultants3
What do you get in a global aggregate strategy?
A multi-faceted universe
The global aggregate bond universe is a high quality, broadly diversified, multi-currency opportunity set, which provides investors with an extensive range of opportunities to capture value.
It extends across key areas of the market, that usually work well in tandem, particularly when market uncertainty may be increasing or turning points are reached.
Four key groups
The Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index is the universe we generally reference when managing our global aggregate strategies. It comprises more than 31,000 securities from more than 3,100 issuers across four key groups4.
Government bonds represent the largest component, being just more than half of the market, at 54%, as Figure 4 shows.
Corporate bonds across the three main sectors of industrials, utilities and financials represent 18% of the market.
They are closely followed by government-related bonds, which are generally similar to corporates but usually with some element of government ownership or control, whether explicit or implicit at 15%.
The remaining component is the securitised bonds group at 13%. These are primarily mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the US, but also commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), asset-backed securities (ABS) and covered bonds.
The government and government-related bonds typically offer better security in an economic downturn, as well as potential for capital gains if yield levels decline as a consequence. Meanwhile corporate credit may provide greater potential positive excess returns if spreads tighten, often when economic outlooks improve, and corporate sectors face more favourable prospects
Figure 4: Global Aggregate Index weights (%)4
Investment grade
The global aggregate bond universe index includes only investment grade (IG) issues, with almost 55% rated in the AAA or AA credit rating brackets. Government and securitised bonds dominate the AAA and AA ratings brackets with corporates prevalent in the lower IG ratings.
Figure 5: Credit rating distribution4
The current opportunity in global aggregate
Attractively high yield levels – for income and capital gains potential
Global bond yields remain close to the highest levels that have prevailed for most of the last 15 years since the global financial crisis struck. With quantitative easing firmly in the past, we believe markets have returned to more ’normal’ market levels, making broad allocations to bonds more attractive for investors.
Insight’s global aggregate bond strategy aims to focus on capturing the attractive income available as well as enjoy the potential for capital gains from mispriced assets or if yield levels decline.
Broadly diversified opportunity set – providing extensive opportunities to find value
A global approach over a regional or country-focused approach can help spread the risk of event-driven volatility and provide access to more opportunities.
Using a relatively unconstrained approach, we have the freedom to allocate across a range of asset classes, beyond the investment grade markets of the benchmark index. They include high yield, emerging markets, and cash.
Extending the investment universe across such a wide cross-section of the credit markets allows us the chance to leverage areas where Insight has expertise and capture opportunities across a fuller spectrum.
