The big geopolitical and macroeconomic events of the last six years haven’t changed the investment game, according to AMP CIO Anna Shelley, but they have changed where you play it, with new investment opportunities beginning to emerge.  
 
“If you think about, even just recently, the focus by various national governments on supply chains and defence and security – that’s changing where investment opportunities are popping up and where capital is needed,” Shelley told an episode of the Investment Magazine CIO Series. 
 
The “tricky thing” is coming to grips with the “endless amount” of opportunities out there, Shelley says. One of those opportunities is, of course, AI – not just in markets, but in how managers invest.   
 
“[AI] is assisting us with due diligence and investment governance, but the thing I’m always keeping an eye out for is when is it going to change the investment process – or when, in fact, it might change markets,” Shelley said.  
 
“And we haven’t seen that from all the research and discussions with our partners and managers; mind you, if somebody did have something revolutionary, they might not share it. But we haven’t seen anybody start delivering 10 per cent instead of their usual one [per cent].”  

That sounds science-fictional, but it’s probably not too far off; as Shelley says, every manager is incentivised to make “as much money as they could in markets” – and every individual is too.  
 
“My sister-in-law worked at Apple, and she came home in 2007 with an iPhone. It wasn’t released yet in Australia, and I remember the first time she showed it to me – the instant you saw the touch screen, you thought ‘Oh my God, this will change the world’ – but you didn’t know how.  
 
“You didn’t know that you’d be reading digital newspapers. AI is kind of like that; there is this feeling that it’s going to change things in a big way, but if I look forward five years, I don’t know – that’s why it’s incumbent on us to keep our eyes out; keep questioning, keep probing and stay curious.” 
 
While the investment team has had “great support” from AMP on AI integration, it’s also leaning on its external managers for insights into how they are using it.  
 
“Right now, one of the things we’re really valuing is manager perspectives on AI and technology. It’s important not just from the manager’s perspective – because there’s always a need for a manager to hone their competitive edge, re-prove it, even, in new environments – but we also need to hone our competitive edge and stay ahead of our competitors.  
 
And while other super funds are increasingly moving towards the total portfolio approach, the AMP team doesn’t think it needs to make the jump – yet.  
 
“It’s something we’re considering; a lot of the smaller funds will say they do it anyway, and some of that is because you’re smaller… our fortnightly asset allocation meeting, everyone is there and everyone has a good opportunity to contribute to that forum, because there’s not many of us,” Shelley said.  
 
“I think it becomes necessary the larger you get, and that’s really in terms of the number of people in your investment team rather than the actual AUM you’re managing. In my experience, once you get above 100 people, you just need to be a bit more sophisticated in how you’re bringing those insights together and looking at the portfolio in its entirety. For us, we’re not near that level.”