Helvetia's Holistic Approach to Portfolio Management

Dominik Gurtner, CTO of Asset Management at Helvetia, shares how tech is enabling more informed decision-making, optimized portfolio management, and increased efficiency. He underscores the importance of a holistic, real-time view across public and private assets—enhancing transparency in asset allocation, performance, and risk management.

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How has Helvetia navigated the recent macro environment?

Helvetia has successfully mastered the volatility of the markets. We have achieved this through proactive risk management, active adaptation of investment strategies to changing market conditions, real-time insights and advanced technologies that we use to manage the investments of our insurers and our clients.

Our investment process is based on a disciplined and structured approach. This framework has been critical to overcoming recent market-driven activity and ensuring that we continue to deliver good results.

How’s tech helping you stay ahead of the game and keep growing?

Modern technologies such as Aladdin and eFront are essential to making forward-looking, informed investment decisions based on our structured investment process.

They enable the use of timely data and advanced analytics to conduct robust risk assessments and optimize portfolio allocations. Integrating these advanced tools into our daily operations increases efficiency, optimizes investment strategies, and ultimately helps us meet our clients' expected results and expectations.

How do you leverage technology to support diversified portfolios?

At Helvetia, we use Aladdin's Whole Portfolio Solution, which provides a holistic view of assets across public and private markets on a single platform. This comprehensive, real-time view of our diversified portfolios increases transparency in asset allocation, performance and risk management. WPS (Whole Portfolio Solution) enables us to make informed and timely investment decisions across all asset classes and portfolios, to take calculated risks and thus deliver convincing risk-adjusted results.

Insurers are liability-driven investors, what does that mean for your risk management?

As an insurance company with long-term liabilities, Helvetia uses robust risk management. This ensures that the assets and investment risks we manage for our internal and external clients are always in line with long-term liabilities and customer-specific considerations, and that the various risk limits and constraints are met.

Modern tools such as BlackRock’s Aladdin and eFront support us in modeling, optimization and risk management to effectively manage the mandates of the Helvetia Insurance Group, its international subsidiaries and our external clients.

How do you see AI’s impact on investment management evolving over the next two years?

We expect AI to rapidly transform many areas of our wealth management. We will use AI to better analyze larger data sets, identify market trends, and assess risks and exposures more effectively. This allows us to become more efficient, make better investment decisions and provide a more tailored customer experience.

In the coming years, we will focus on increasing efficiency through automation, improving our research and portfolio construction, and optimizing customer engagement, reporting, and customer experience.

What advice would you give to someone embarking on a similar transformation journey?

Start with a clear vision. Focus on aligning technology with business goals. Execute the project in a disciplined manner and remain adaptable. Ensure strong engagement and work with experienced partners. Embrace change and foster a culture that values professionalism, innovation, and continuous improvement. There will be many challenges, but with perseverance and a focus on people, you can achieve the transformation goals.