The 11th Asset Allocation Awards: Five Winners, One Clear Pattern
After 72 reports and eleven years of data, the allocators who moved least outperformed the ones who moved most. Today we name the five who proved it.
Seventy percent of the asset allocation reports published in 2025 did not need to be read. The question is which thirty percent was worth your time.
That is precisely the question Alpha Research began answering in 2016 with the first edition of the Asset Allocation Awards. This year, in the eleventh edition, we assessed a record 72 reports. Five winners remained.
How winners are determined: recommendations are assessed over a rolling twelve-month period, alongside consistency of publication and argumentation, and breadth of asset classes covered. Scores are based on ex-ante positioning relative to ex-post market results. No subjective jury, no popularity vote.
Asset Allocation Award: UBP
UBP wins two awards simultaneously this year. It is the seventh time in eleven years, and five of those six previous occasions combined the Overall Award with the Asset Allocation Award. The pattern has become a defining characteristic. Their monthly House View runs to more than twenty pages and scored highest in the asset allocation category this year, ahead of strong competitors including J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Robeco and Northern Trust AM.
The distinguishing factor: UBP takes explicit positions across asset classes, with a clear time horizon per recommendation. There is no room for the strategic ambiguity that characterises many competing reports. That makes their recommendations testable. And the results speak for themselves.
Fixed Income Award: Federated Hermes
Six pages. That is all Federated Hermes needs to win the Fixed Income Award in a year when the rate environment showed more movement than the preceding three years combined.
The compactness is not a limitation. It is the product. No commentary requiring further commentary, no frameworks explaining other frameworks. The view is there, the position is alongside it, and the argumentation fits within a single read on a morning commute. For a time-pressed allocator, that is no small achievement: insights that are immediately actionable, without working through twenty pages first. Their coverage of Inflation Linked Bonds was accurately positioned in a quarter when the market significantly underweighted that segment. Precision, packaged in format.
Equities Regional Award: ING Investment Office
ING Investment Office ranks among the most consistent asset managers in the universe with 18 all-time nominations. But consistency is often confused with caution, and that is a misreading here.
A neutral recommendation sounds uneventful. In practice, it is one of the hardest positions to maintain. In a year when virtually every major allocator tilted toward the US, ING explicitly chose neutral on North America at two quarterly junctures. No underweight, no overweight. A deliberate refusal to move with the consensus. Both times, correctly. This is someone else’s money. Whoever understands that knows not losing is not a half-hearted strategy. It is discipline, and discipline has a price here.
Equities Sectors Award: Invesco
After six nominations, Invesco takes the award this year. Their publication Uncommon Truths combines sector views from the US and Europe into one consolidated global allocation, an approach most competing asset managers do not apply, as it requires additional position-taking per region.
That integration advantage proved decisive this year. Sector rotation in Europe played out differently from the US in 2025. Those analysing both markets separately missed the correlation. Invesco did not.
Overall Award: UBP
The Overall Award combines performance across asset allocation, regional equities and fixed income. UBP scored within the top five in all three categories this year. That breadth-and-depth profile has occurred only twice in eleven years of award history.
Monthly publication, explicit positions, demonstrable results. Three characteristics that rarely converge. This year, they did, at one asset manager.
Follow them
Five reports. Three criteria. Eleven years of data. The conclusion is the same every time: the asset manager who maintains independent judgment when consensus moves the other way does not win spectacularly, but does win. Consistency is not a style preference. It is a return driver, and this year, once again, the only one that counts.
New to this? Asset allocation is the decision that determines how an investor distributes capital across equities, fixed income and other categories, and that choice historically explains more than eighty percent of the performance difference between portfolios. These five reports are the best-documented guide to exactly that decision.