18 Nominations in 11 Years: What ING Investment Office Does Systematically Differently From the Big Anglo-Saxon Asset Managers
Architecture beats talent. Here’s the proof.
Bob Homan, Global Chief Investment Officer, says it without hesitation: “We are probably individually less smart than those people out there.”
Those people are the large Anglo-Saxon asset managers: BlackRock, Goldman, firms with thousands of analysts and billions in research budgets. It’s a striking opening line for someone whose team has won the Asset Allocation Award six times and collected eighteen nominations in eleven years. But it isn’t false modesty. It’s a philosophy of process.
ING Investment Office doesn’t distinguish itself through better forecasts. It distinguishes itself through a system that keeps bad forecasts from becoming fatal.
The architecture
The committee counts over twenty people, including colleagues from Belgium and Luxembourg. Everyone contributes input: sector analysts, risk, communications. But the decision is made by six. And the decision isn’t put to a vote. The chair hears every opinion and decides.
Simon Wiersma, strategist and member of the Investment Committee: “The consistency doesn’t come from being able to forecast, it comes from having a tight process. Combining multiple perspectives, staying independent of anyone or anything. Even our own economists are input, not leading. Minimizing bias through governance. And putting risk at the center.”
Half of the committee members were already there in 2009. That’s no coincidence. Team stability is part of the design.
But experience alone isn’t enough. The younger guard, late twenties to early thirties, brings something the system deliberately needs: exponential thinking. Homan: “Things can behave exponentially. The real old-timers, the less flexible ones, don’t want to believe that, but it’s true anyway.” He explicitly counts himself among them.
The team’s barbell structure, 50-plus experience alongside young staff with AI and coding skills, isn’t a staffing choice. It’s architecture.
The evidence cuts both ways
April 2025. The market is sitting at the most negative scenario from the outlook Wiersma wrote in late 2024. The committee concludes: it can’t get much more negative than this. They buy. The timing is accurate to the day.
Then the other side. The Iran war breaks out. The majority of the committee wants to overweight America, underweight Europe. Homan decides differently: the trend of Europe outperforming America will continue after the conflict, and the war will be short. Both assumptions turn out wrong. It doesn’t work out.
What stands out: Homan tells this without hesitation. No defensive language, no after-the-fact justification. That openness is exactly what makes the process philosophy credible. A system that protects you from your own mistakes is only trustworthy if you’re willing to name those mistakes.
Choosing the right playing field
Asked why ING doesn’t bet on quantitative investing or AI-driven allocation, Homan gives an answer that sticks: “If you’re going up against Rico Verhoeven, you’re better off challenging him to checkers or chess than to boxing. On that terrain, we lose to firms throwing far more money, people, and data at the problem. Do what you’re good at.”
That isn’t a weakness. It’s an architectural decision. ING does use AI, but as an information processor. Wiersma has his own daily agent that summarizes incoming research into a tactical allocation overview. It saves time. It doesn’t make decisions.
The line is drawn deliberately. Top-down asset allocation, the over- and underweighting of equities versus bonds, remains human work. For now.
Where they stand now
The current positioning illustrates the philosophy. At the top level, ING is neutral on equities, real estate, commodities, and bonds. After the rally in early 2026, positions were actively rebalanced. Stretched expectations and the risk of persistently high inflation don’t justify big bets.
But neutral at the top level masks an active position underneath: ING is overweight Emerging Markets, through exposure to South Korea and Taiwan. Technology and semiconductors, the AI chain via the EM index. Two triggers actively guard that position: a stronger dollar putting pressure on EM, and a shift in AI sentiment where earnings growth slowing, even from 40% to 39.5%, could be enough to tip the balance.
Wiersma puts it this way: “Make sure you don’t box yourself in. If the market moves against you, you need to always still have the option to add.”
That’s the core of it. Not being the smartest. Not taking the biggest bets. Building a system that protects you from yourself, and letting it work year after year. Homan said it at the start of the conversation. Eleven years of Awards later, it turns out not to be modesty. It’s the strategy.