Why UBC Investment Management CEO Dawn Jia says portfolios need nutrients, not asset-class labels

How should institutional investors think about portfolio construction in an era of market concentration? Dawn Jia, president and CEO of UBC Investment Management, joins The Allocators Playbook with an unusual answer: stop investing by the label. Just as a diet isn't really about meat, carbs and vegetables but about protein and vitamins, Jia argues portfolio construction should look past asset class labels to the economic exposures underneath — a lens that lets UBCIM spot a valuation gap between public REITs and private real assets and, she says, pocket a 30% return in twelve months.

In conversation with Markets Group Deputy Editor Lauren Bailey, Jia explains why index concentration has become a structural ceiling on active management — beat a top-heavy benchmark and you'd have to be more concentrated than the benchmark itself — and where she's hunting for uncorrelated alpha as de-globalization regionalizes the opportunity set. She also details why UBCIM redesigned a quant manager's strategy around a climate-aware benchmark instead of dropping the manager over weak proxy voting, and why social risk is t