Podcast | Building Flexible Multi-sector Portfolios

Stewart: Welcome to another edition of the InsuranceAUM.com Podcast. My name is Stewart Foley, I'll be your host. Most of you know who are listening to us today, we are insurance asset management nerds here, me and our guest today. And I think one of the things that we do an okay job with is I think our slogan is going to be 'learn a few things and have a little fun'. And that's the purpose of today's podcast, to talk about insurance asset management with Jeffrey Hobbs CFA, head of Insurance Portfolio Management at Voya. Jeffrey, welcome, man. We've got a lot to talk about. So let's get at it.

Jeffrey: Hey Stewart, thanks for having me. And 'asset management nerd' is what it says on my business card. So I feel like I'm in the right spot here. So thanks for having me on.

Stewart: Thank you. And that's exactly what's on my LinkedIn profile. It says ‘insurance asset management nerd’. So we have lots of stuff in common. We're both Midwesterners, we both went to the University of Chicago and we both run money for insurance companies in our careers. And so I'm thrilled to talk to you and we've got lots to cover. But before we get going too far, I'd love to know where did you grow up, your hometown, what was your first job? Not the fancy one. And what makes insurance, and this is one I'm hoping there's a high bar for you on this one, what makes insurance asset management so cool?

Jeffrey: No, that's great. So my hometown is Muncie, Indiana. So Middletown USA, my first W2 job was in Muncie at a place called Midwest Homes for Pets. It's the largest maker of pet homes in the world. And I worked on the packaging line, so that was putting dog crates in packages. And I always got the worst job. So there were four people on the line. One guy put a piece of cardboard into a machine and it folded into a box. I would then pick a dog crate up out of a larger container that came from a different part of the factory. I would put it in the box, and then somebody took a very tiny plastic tray, put a sticker on it, put it in the box, and then somebody would wheel it off the assembly line and head it to a truck. So if you ever want to get a great workout and want to make $8 an hour, right, I've got a job for you in Muncie, Indiana.

Stewart: Exactly.

Jeffrey: I did that when I was a teenager. That was my first W2 job.

Stewart: And I worked for a workers' comp company. And so I know all about repetitive motion injuries and all kinds of stuff. So that's a whole different topic, but what do you think makes insurance asset management so cool? I mean, you've been at this a long time and you're regarded and you're well known, and what do you think makes this industry so cool?

Jeffrey: Thank you very much for that. I like that markets are constantly evolving, so we're trying to figure out a solution in real time. At Voya, we lend to 1100 companies, and you're always going to have, you're driving down the highway with your kids, right? There's going to be a truck that passes that we have a relationship with commercial real estate all over the country. We have lending relationships, and so markets evolve. You're going to need to evolve. I do like the fact that the job comes with a scoreboard and a little bit of competition. I've always worked for public stock companies and there's tremendous operating leverage through insurance portfolios to the results of the company. And so it's intellectually stimulating, constantly evolving, and you get a little bit of that competitive fervor and trying to deliver results for your stakeholders.

Stewart: And for folks who don't know, can you give us a little bit of background on Voya? I mean, you're an insurance company, you have an asset management firm. What all goes on at Voya?

Jeffrey: Yeah, so I work for Voya Investment Management. That's the Global Asset Management company that's a subsidiary of Voya Financial. So Voya Investment Management has $330 billion assets under management. I'm the head of insurance portfolio management. So my team coordinates the investment activities for our internal insurance business, which has a balance sheet of a little under $40 billion. We also manage money for third party insurance companies. That business is actually now larger than our internally facing business. A little over $50 billion of assets.

Stewart: Congratulations.

Jeffrey: Oh, thank you. So within that $330 billion of assets, about 30% of it's in the insurance channel. And then Way Financial is a retirement services wealth and health company providing real solutions through the workplace. That's the core of the insurance business. And then the global asset manager has really grown out of those insurance routes.

Stewart: And it gets me into the questions, the meat and potatoes of the podcast today. So it seems like markets have been coming to terms with a higher-for-longer rate backdrop, although I would say, I mean historically, not at the high end of high, but certainly higher than it had been up until 2022. And what do you think the market is missing or not considering given this base case view? Is there a risk at being too complacent? Because I don't hear a lot of alarm sounding going on, but I'm a bond geek and that always concerns me.

Jeffrey: Yeah, well you talked about what do you like in insurance asset management. Part of that's the problem-solving nature. I'm glad we're solving a different problem. We spent a decade plus talking about lower-for-longer. So it's a little bit of a relief to talk about higher-for-longer for a change. Your levered insurance company balance sheets fundamentally have to prepare for a probabilistic range of futures outcomes. So it's very easy to get focused on the path ahead, that feels like the central tendency, but you have to build a portfolio that can still outperform at the wings of those outcomes as well.

So higher-for-longer and an inverted yield curve means those floating grade assets that insurance companies have been agglomerating are going to continue to offer attractive carry, but higher for longer also runs the risk of something breaking. Right? higher for longer fundamentally means the central bank is going to keep policy tighter for longer than the market has been expecting. In that scenario, you also want to own some high-quality duration. So credit has priced in the soft landing scenario, we're something around 85 basis points on public IG spreads. We're inside 300 on public high yields. 
So the central tendency for markets, for credit markets, is a soft landing scenario, tighter policy that higher-for-longer could actually begin to challenge that. And that's something that insurance companies need to be thinking about. And to your question, that's a risk that we become too complacent in our outlook.

Stewart: So, that's super interesting. I mean, I agree with you there. Insurance companies across segments have experienced increased liquidity needs driven by higher interest rates, social inflation claims inflation and claim behavior. So how are you advising your clients to navigate these liquidity needs with interest rates volatility elevated like it is, and the thing that I guess I get back to, and I don't want to name names here, but just one anecdote, in particular, is a friend that sits on our executive council that runs a very large portfolio and the mortgage prepayments that they had forecast from the prior very low rate environment, those shut off. I mean, if you've got a 2.875% mortgage, that thing's a museum piece as far as everybody else is concerned, right? So how are you advising your clients in that environment?

Jeffrey: Yeah, so in your question, you talked about kind of three different reasons that some insurance companies have faced liquidity strain, and those are across three different kind of sub-industries of insurance. So certainly some annuity riders have felt some disintermediation risk from the move, higher in rates. They're seeing some of their legacy annuities with lower crediting rates lapse.

We've seen some healthy claim severities on the PNC side where that inflationary impulse has led to worse outcomes and strain liquidity, and you've had a little bit of cat risk in different parts of the country as well. And then social inflation on the healthcare side. So you think about it, those are three very different insurance types, all feeling a little bit of liquidity pressure at the same time throw in a central bank that's trying to tighten monetary policy and you end up with some liquidity concerns.

So how are we thinking about navigating that environment? Really, I think the stress has come from how quickly we got to from that lower-for-longer to the higher-for-longer. I remember sitting at the ACLI SIMS in the fall of 2022, the I.G. index was heading to 6% for the first time since mid 2009. And if you had told that audience a year earlier that we were going to have 6% IG yields, everybody would've celebrated, and there was a palpable sense of dread from some of the audience. So we dealt with lower-for-longer for so long rates had come higher quickly and had caught people off guard.

I think on the liquidity side, I think you really want three things, right? You want to have a enterprise liquidity plan that includes contingent sources of liquidity, right? Revolving credit facilities, repo line, FHLB capacity, funding agreement back, note issuance (potentially), and a strategic asset allocation model that includes some amount of liquid assets. Second, you want to have a core fixed income manager that's actively engaged and delivers good client service as the solution they need to provide. Change as the market environment changes. And third, when those are addressed, you want to be able to still glean liquidity premia that has widened out in an environment where insurers haven't been committing capital in the same wave that they were in a different rate environment.

Stewart: That's really cool. And you mentioned a couple of folks there. I'd love to give a shout out to the folks at ACLI. They do a great amazing job and they've been kind enough to invite us out. And then obviously our friends at Federal Home Loan Bank, I mean I think a lot of people do know about that liquidity source, but I mean insurance companies are by number not as big, but as borrowers are massive clients of Federal Home Loan bank, and that's always good to keep people aware of that.

Spreads on public credit are tight. So somebody threw this at me the other day and said that long credit is at their 5th percentile tight. Intermediate credit is something like 15th percentile tight. My number's not yours, but generally I think that's about right. But all in yields on public credit are, as you mentioned, higher, better, or I don't know if it's better, higher. What do you think insurance companies, what kind of relationship should they have with that asset class, particularly given how central it is to most insurer portfolios today and has historically always been the case?

Jeffrey: Yeah, private credit is the hot list for the industry, right? Everybody wants to come on your podcast and talk about what they're doing in private credit, but public credit is a building block of insurance company portfolios. For a lot of insurers it's still their largest asset class. And the reason is it allows us to have a liquid source of credit premia where you can invest from overnight to 30 plus years from AAA to deeply speculative grade, diversified by issuer or sector or subsector across the curve.

Really good public credit managers are invaluable. I like to use the example, right, the Bloomberg Barclays Long IG corporate index has only had one year of above 20% total returns in its 30, 40 plus year history. But we saw 20% returns in a two-month period and a three-month period here over the last few years. So October 2022, around the time of the UK pension crisis in the January 2023, we saw a 20% total return. And again, October 2023 last year into mid-December with rate rally and credit spreads tight and we saw a 20% return. So really nimble managers can create exceptional value if you have a more passive approach or you have sold all of your liquid assets to have a less liquid strategy, you're going to miss on some of those tactical opportunities.

So Voya, the same team that manages our IG CCAD, which has a top percentile information ratio, that same team is managing multi-sector insurance assets. And I've found right across the industry, everybody tends to think they do public credit grade, but I do think that there's still ways to differentiate in there and drive value. So spreads are certainly tight here on both public IG and public high yield. Yields are still attractive and there's still opportunity to create value for nimble managers.

Stewart: And you mentioned private credit, I mean insurance asset management is white hot, and I'd like to thank the good lord for that. And in addition, private credit is white hot. It is, absolutely. We just did a survey of our symposium attendees and private credit and private structure were tied for the number one topic that people want to talk about. Obviously, we do that to help us set the agenda so that we make sure that we're on point. And when you look out at the landscape, how are you differentiating between managers and opportunities?

Jeffrey: Yeah, it's a great question. So private credit, right means a lot of different things to different audiences. If you start kind of at the investment grade, private placements, what the insurance industry has long thought about as private credit. So Voya is the largest manager for third-party insurance companies in that space. That's like a $40 billion business at Voya. We have a long history in that space. I think getting access to an insurance investment manager that is going to be aligned with you in navigating private markets is important. Private credit has certainly expanded away from investment grade private placements into more middle market credit, direct lending and other types of speculative grade lending. And I think in a decade of 0% interest rate policy, the longest economic expansion we had seen in US history into the COVID downturn, it was easy to be a good private credit manager.

We are very likely to see dispersion in outcomes going forward. It's easy for us to think about, hey, debt service coverage, the underlying borrowers. That has changed dramatically in a world where silver went from 0% to a mid-5 % area. If we see a little bit of slowdown, we know we're going to see a pickup in stress and distress in that space. And so I think you want to have a manager that's cycle tested. I think you want to have a manager with internal workout chops. I think you want to have a manager who is attacking this from what's a second way home for these credits. You look at a lot of private credit managers and they'll hand you a book, and originations is only slightly different from AUM, right? It means they haven't actually had many people pay them principal back.

So you want to be, I think, disciplined in how you attack the market. I think for insurance company balance sheets, there are certainly ways to access senior lending to those private credit shops that will prove to be loss remote and a durable source of spread premium. That industry is going to need more capital, it's going to continue to grow, but especially if we do ultimately hit a little bit of economic turbulence, new capital coming into the space should be able to command attractive economics.

Stewart: That's really interesting. And you have third-party clients and you also have Voya's GA.

Jeffrey: Yeah.

Stewart: If I come in, if I'm a CIO and I come in, how do you address some of the things that you're buying, you are buying for the general account and some you're buying for third party clients. Can you talk a little bit about how... I mean I would say that Voya's GA helps you with flow and helps you because you've been at that a long time. But talk to me a little bit about how a third-party client is treated on allocations versus how Voya's GA is.

Jeffrey: So we have a couple decades history in private placement markets until a decade ago that was only for the home team. And so we've now commercialized that and brought in third parties. There is a very detailed compliance oversight around that. So we're going to have in clients with mandate forms, we're going to have how much of a certain deal fits, right, the construct fits the current size of the how we would think about sizing single issuer risk. That is going to turn into a bid size for all the individual clients. The general account is going to have the same to the extent that we put in a bid, $250 million and we get $125 million of bonds, everybody gets cut back pro rata and it's a very detailed compliance oversight to make sure that all clients are treated fairly there.

Stewart: And I want to make the point because I've worked in a shop like that and there was a lot of effort to make sure that the GA and the third party clients were treated pari passu, right? Nobody has an advantage one way or the other. And I think it's an important point to make because it's something that people think about when it comes to that and I'm happy we were able to cover it.

Jeffrey: Yeah, no, that's certainly how it's supposed to work. And I think for smaller insurance companies, they're going to get access to deal flow that they may have not had individually. Then they're going to have access to ... in the rare events of credit distress, a workout team that's going to bring together one voice for the lender group. I think that's a really important kind of model to take to small and medium-sized insurance companies.

Stewart: And so a lot of people are talking about CRE. For insurers that steered away from CMBS or CMLs altogether, is it time to get back in those markets? What are your best ideas in that space?

Jeffrey: Right, so you had one of my teammates, Greg Michelle on talking about commercial real estate recently. You've had a number of interesting podcasts on this point because we talked about public credit spreads at near historic type levels, and you have commercial real estate lending markets that are in recession or in the early recovery stage. So that's a little bit of a unique dynamic. And if you think about, it's hard to get broad index data on commercial mortgage loans. It's a private asset class, but the American Council for Life Insurers does a pretty good job. They collect information on commercial mortgage loan commitments from a cross-section of insurance companies, Voya participates in those surveys.

Last year, 2023, you saw the average spread on commercial loan commitments was something around 215 over treasuries. That was about 30 basis points wider year over year. That happened in an environment where IG credit spreads right tight about 30 basis points. So CML commitment spreads widening 30, public IG spreads that you often think of as a pricing comp tightened 30. And you might say, "Well of course that happened, right? Commercial real estate markets are under stress. Of course, they underperformed public corporate credit."

But if you looked at the REIT sub index of the IG corporate index, it actually outperformed the broad credit index. It tightened about 40 basis points last year. And so deploying capital and commercial mortgage markets commanded increasing premia, and at least the corporate part of that market, which is not a direct comparable but unsecured market there tightened in.

And so I think there's a lot of opportunities to provide capital, the kind of normal, traditional fixed rate amortizing CML is going to now have a mid 6% type coupon, mid to high 6% type coupon. We're seeing borrowers you came into this year and the commercial mortgage industry was getting bulled up on the prospect of lower fed funds rate. And you saw a lot of deal flow happen early in the year. This idea of 'survive 'till 2025'. And you've seen some of that deal flow start to slow.

We've seen borrowers come back and want more core floaters with open prepay options, right? Again, trying to buy some time until you have recovery in the market. So we've seen a pullback in lending in certain spaces that had been dominated by regional banks. So think construction lending. That can offer exceptional value, that is an early recovery type product. You don't want to be late cycle in that product. And to the extent that you can command lower starting LTVs, better economics, more maybe participation in the shared upside of a project, those are interesting spots. So there's going to be places for opportunistic capital to come into a market that is still going to be hard-pressed to find the amount of capital that we need. And so that's going to continue to be an interesting opportunity for insurance companies to step in where banks have pulled back a little bit.

Stewart: So you mentioned the rapid increase in interest rates, right? And I mean I think that just across the board, I think while folks wanted higher rates, it happened so quickly and so that left a lot of people with unrealized losses in their portfolio, but they're putting new money to work at much higher rates. So I want to kind of pivot to your multi sector portfolios just a little bit. Have you been active there or are you deploying more of a low turnover approach to minimize realized losses? I mean, just figuring out what is your philosophy there and how are you adding value?

Jeffrey: A lot of people took a low turnover approach over the past decade of lower-for-longer. If they're taking a low turnover approach now, then they are a low turnover manager that is only going to be more active in the kind of sweet spot of market yields being relatively close to the portfolio book yield. So we've been able to drive portfolio book yield higher while still managing in an income aware manner. So Voya Financial is a public company. We care about gap income volatility, STAT IMR is going to be a constraint for life co's. We think we can still create value in this environment. Portfolio book yield, Voya's up about 60 basis points over the last 2 years, and that's been an environment where we've had a little bit of net outflows as we've had some disintermediation risk from our group annuity products.

So we've still been able to create value, still been able to do that in a way that thinks about that gain loss constraint. So having an active core manager that provides good client service, understands the needs of the insurance company, I think is really valuable and that's the role my team tries to play for our internal constituents here.

Stewart: You mentioned a couple of terms there and I want to ... my professor's Spidey senses perk up when I hear things like this. So I want to unpack a couple of things. So you mentioned STAT IMR and there's folks who listen to our podcasts that are using it to learn. So STAT IMR, IMR is interest maintenance reserve. Can you give us just a quick high level what's IMR?

Jeffrey: Yeah, I'll try to do it from the professorial bit that you have. So picture Foley Insurance Company. So Foley Insurance Company has a billion dollars of assets, $900 million of liabilities and $100 million of equity. And we'll say that you're a life writer that has a 10-duration portfolio. And then let's picture a world where rates rally a hundred basis points, that $1 billion of assets is now worth $1.1 billion. Your liabilities are still $900 million.

If you then sold those assets that you bought for $1 billion for $1.1 billion in a world your equity could go up to $200 million and all of a sudden Foley Insurance Company distributes that capital to Foley Holding Company and you live a lavish lifestyle, right? And so what the insurance regulators did in the early 1990s was introduce this concept of an interest maintenance reserve. And so that $100 million of gains that you took essentially became a liability accounted balance sheet that was called the interest maintenance reserve. And those gains amortized into capital over the life of the assets that you sold. So that 10-year duration period.

When IMR is positive, it's a liability. When it's negative, it does not become an asset. And so if you have kind of a retained earnings gain/loss account, if you've taken net losses that doesn't show up as an asset, that shows up as a non-admitted asset, and those losses start to hurt capital. And so the industry got a little bit of relief from regulators in this sharp uptick in rates. And there's still ongoing discussions about if some of this near-term relief is going to be extended into the future.

We're taking a little bit of a conservative view of saying, well, we're still going to manage IMR of zero is a lower bound. So still generating realized gains in that environment through opportunistic, tactical trading can be valuable and taking some of those losses that have a book yield lower than current market yields and then taking losses and moving that yield higher. So that I think speaks to this desire to have kind of an active approach to building portfolios.

Stewart: That's fantastic. I love that. And then now the other thing is that you mentioned was the disintermediation risk in your annuity book, and I'm going to attempt this and see how we do, and you can grade me.

So if I own an a Voya annuity and let's say that it pays 4% and I look around and I say, "I can earn 6% in the market". I say, "I want my money back, Voya," and I put my money someplace else. And so that results in a redemption for you, which you have to have the cash available to make that redemption. So the term for that is disintermediation, and that's what you were talking about with that is a risk when interest rates go up significantly like they have. Is that a fairly good explanation?

Jeffrey: You got it. Right. So that 4% guarantee in a zero interest rate world, you may have thought, hey, that 4% is going to stick around for a very long time and view that liability as having a relatively long duration. Now it has shortened here meaningfully with the rise in interest rates and you're seeing some of that money leave. So at Voya, that risk has been very manageable. But it goes back to this idea we talked about earlier of building a portfolio construct that is responsive to those potential liquidity needs. And so that is something that's still permeating the annuity industry and circles back to this idea of liquidity had become a little bit strained for the industry for a broad number of reasons in the last couple of years.

Stewart: That's fantastic. I have had such fun having you on today. It's been great. I've got a couple of fun ones for you out the door, if you'll indulge me. You can answer either of them or both. Most of our guests answer both. No pressure. Okay. You ready? Here we go.

Jeffrey: Yeah, please.

Stewart: Okay. The first one is, there a piece of advice you've gotten along the way in your career that would be helpful to a 25-year-old Jeffrey Hobbs or equivalent today? And a lot of our podcast listeners, sometimes they're earlier in their careers and I think people who have attained the level of success that you have often have some things that would be helpful. So is there anything that you would offer our audience or offer your 25-year-old self?

Jeffrey: Yeah. No. Early in my career, I had people that would often tell me, "Hey, the insurance industry is pretty small." And that did not make sense to me. I looked at the industry that had trillions of dollars of assets under management, this very broad cross section of the United States and the industry felt huge. And it's pretty small, right?

Stewart: It's real small.

Jeffrey: And you're making it smaller. I think one of the values of InsuranceAUM is you're connecting different parts of the industry together. And there are people that have been on your podcast that I have relationships with. I like to listen to the podcasts of people I'm about to talk to and are externally facing part of this. So the industry is small, and that means that that should always impact how you carry yourself. The people that you make connections with could be future strategic partners. They could be somebody that ends up working with you in the future. It could be somebody that you want to have a client relationship with, advisor relationship with and the future. So the industry is small and your reputation is hard won, and you should always be thinking about the fact that the people that you're dealing with are going to be connected with you for the rest of your career. And so I think that's an important one.

Stewart: It is a small family, it is a small community and it's one that ... I think your point's well taken. I mean, it's like living in a small town, people get to know you. I've been super fortunate that, I mean, I've done it for so long that I know a lot of people and so it's great advice. I think it's a great point.

And now my other question as we go is who would you most like to have lunch with, alive or dead? And I've kind of changed the parameters here.

Jeffrey: Okay.

Stewart: We've now got up to a table of four that includes you, so you could have more than one person.

Jeffrey: Up to a table of four?

Stewart: But who would you like to have lunch with, alive or debt? Could be one, but could be up to three.

Jeffrey: So I'll give the softie answer first. So my maternal grandfather passed about six years before I was born, so that's somebody I met, and then my paternal grandmother passed away when I was an infant, and so I never knew them. And so I'd like to sit and talk to them about, "Hey, here's happened in the family over the last 40 or 50 years."

Stewart: You know what their question would be?

Jeffrey: Yeah?

Stewart: The same one everybody asks. What is it that you do?

Jeffrey: Exactly. Exactly. What is it that you do?

Stewart: What is it that you do? Again, you go-

Jeffrey: You sell insurance?

Stewart: Exactly. This is unbelievable. I get this random email, "Hey, I'm looking for coverage for ..." I'm like, the hell are we doing here? It's like, but I swear to God, I think of all the people on our podcast, I think one of the biggest joys is that they get a chance to talk to somebody else who understands what they do, which is, no kidding. So, I'm sorry.

Jeffrey: Yeah. My parents were both school teachers and for a long time they thought that's what I was doing. I was selling-

Stewart: For sure.

Jeffrey: ... insurance. Not quite, but hey, I think about my parents, my wife's parents are involved in my children's lives, and so that grandparent relationship is different. I didn't have that, so I'd like them to be there.

The third person is a little bit of an outlier. And maybe more to the point of your question, I think it's Ben Franklin, right? I think that would be fun. And so founding father, diplomat, polymath, I think he'd be great to have. I think history suggests he would be a fun lunch or dinner companion guy, seemed like he liked to have a good time, and so I think it'd be great to have him there. And you think about the founding father role he played, this idea of a democracy was a new one that hadn't been around in the world for almost 2000 years, and it was this concept that was more of a dream, and now 250 years into the experiment, it'd be great to talk about the things that have went really well and then the things why it's under pressure again in different parts of the world.

And so I think that conversation would be great. I would like to talk about markets for the guy that was out there with a lightning rod, right? The high tech revolution that has to start with harnessing electricity, I think would be fascinating. And so that'd be a good discussion. Maybe my grandma and grandpa would get bored with that one, but I think it'd be good to have him around.

Stewart: I don't know if you ... I'm going to display my insurance geekness. I believe that he was one of the founders of the Philadelphia Contributionship, which was one of the first, if not the first insurance company in the US. I'll probably get some write-in people saying, "Oh no, that's not true, whatever".

But honestly, they were a client of our firm's and he's got not only an amazing founding father and all the things you mentioned, but also had a major impact on the insurance industry. So, great picks.

Jeffrey: If you get write-in feedback here, I'd love to hear it. Shoot me an email and we will chat about it again, all right?

Stewart: There you go. All right, that sounds great. We've had a great podcast today, we've been joined by Jeffrey Hobbs CFA, who's the head of insurance portfolio management at Voya Investment Management, part of Voya Financial. Thanks for listening. It's great to hear your comments and love our audience and the nice things they have to say. We certainly appreciate that. If you have ideas for podcasts, please shoot me a note at Stewart@insuranceaum.com. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. My name's Stewart Foley, and this is the Insuranceaum.com Podcast.