Invesco

ETFs in 2026: How Usage is Evolving Across Insurance Portfolios

Salman Zaidi discusses how market volatility, regulatory trends, and portfolio needs are reshaping ETF adoption across insurance general accounts.

How Institutions are Rethinking ETFs

New research from Invesco and Cerulli Associates examines how ETF strategies and use cases are evolving among asset owners.

Three Reasons to Consider S&P 500 Equal Weight

The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) equally weights all stocks in the S&P 500 Index, mitigating concentration risk versus the top-heavy cap-weighted parent index. This approach tilts towards the small size factor – as equal weighting naturally overweights the smallest securities in the parent index and underweights the largest – and the value factor, as relative winners are trimmed and relative laggards are added to at the quarterly rebalance back to equal weight.

Financing the Future: Credit Markets and AI Infrastructure

Invesco’s Fixed Income portfolio managers discuss the investment opportunity in AI infrastructure, its associated risks, and the emergence of public-private financing deals.

2026 US Senior Loan and CLO Market Outlook

We expect approximately 7.0-7.5% loan returns in 2026, again carried by coupon income and augmented by minor price appreciation.

Insurance Outlook 2026

We believe 2026 will present insurers with another challenging investment backdrop. While the global economy held up reasonably well in 2025, there are a number of risks to consider moving forward. For example, will the Federal Reserve cut rates too quickly and drive inflation higher? Or will it cut too slowly and be forced to play catch-up in a deteriorating economy? Will tariffs bring about a new round of inflationary pressure? Will geopolitical conflicts bring risk assets under pressure?

Real Estate in Institutional Portfolios: Challenges, Cycles & Opportunities

Institutional investors are shifting to real estate debt and alternative sectors to capture growth, manage risk, and hedge against inflation.

New Opportunities in Data Center Securitization

The Invesco Structured Investments Team prefers facilities with modern infrastructure, access to ample power, strategic locations, strong sponsorship and adaptable tenant structures that position investors to benefit from growing demand for AI, hybrid cloud, and high-density computing.

Opportunity in Real Estate Credit: 4 Key Takeaways

Private lender originations in commercial real estate (CRE) credit have surged significantly, surpassing pre-pandemic levels and indicating a growing market share for private lenders in CRE financing. This trend is driven by policy rate reductions and stabilizing property prices, creating renewed investor interest in this asset class.

Capital Market Assumptions – Q3 Update

Invesco’s long-term outlook utilizes a building block approach to estimate asset class returns, risk, and correlations relative to history and aid in allocation decisions.

Alternative Opportunities for Insurers | Q3 Update

In our Q3 2025 edition of Alternative Opportunities for insurers, we continue to cover views on a variety of private asset classes from Invesco Solutions and our partner firms. Within this piece, we’ll present a framework for analyzing across alternative markets to help inform insurers’ investment decisions.

US and Global Commercial Real Estate — Fourth Quarter 2025 Outlook

It’s been a year of significant shifts in global trading and economic growth patterns. Tariffs and trade wars have disrupted global trade flows, contributing to slower growth in key economies. In this environment, we believe that real estate sectors with higher income yields and income streams that are less tied to the business cycle are best positioned to outperform.

Direct Lending’s Evolution: Managing Through the Current Environment

Navigating today’s uncertain environment, Ron Kantowitz describes how Invesco’s direct lending team remains highly selective, focusing on capital preservation and disciplined risk management. By sticking to senior secured lending and waiting for market clarity, our team is positioned to capitalize on future opportunities while maintaining a conservative, diversified portfolio.

Direct Lending’s Evolution: Adapting Through a Shifting Environment

Direct lending has undergone a dramatic transformation, shifting from a bank-dominated market to one led by private capital managers. As regulatory changes have reshaped the landscape, direct lenders have rapidly expanded their role, now competing head-to-head with banks in even the largest transactions. Ron Kantowitz talks about the transformation of direct lending with the Capital Allocators podcast.

What Are Global Investor Flows Into US Real Estate?

Reduced cross-border investment in new US commercial real estate may impact US and global property sectors, markets, and assets differently.

2025 Midyear Investment Outlook: The Global Reset

While policy and economic uncertainty are high, we are confident in our base case that non-US assets are increasingly attractive.

Private Credit Quarterly Roundup: Liberation Day Market Responses

The experts from Invesco’s bank loan, direct lending, and distressed credit teams to share their views for the second quarter of 2025.

What Will Happen to Commercial Real Estate Values in 2025?

Key takeaways: CRE lenders staying the course, Value growth in 2025 highly likely, Stay measured

Alternative Opportunities for Insurers | Q2 Update

The Invesco Solutions team shares their latest views on private credit, private equity, and real assets.

Capital Market Assumptions – Q1 Update

Invesco’s long-term outlook utilizes a building block approach to estimate asset class returns, risk, and correlations relative to history and aid in allocation decisions.

“Liberation Day” Tariff Announcement

US President Trump announced tariffs to be applied on imports from a variety of countries. These tariffs were worse than most had expected.

Real Estate Occupancy: The Starting Point Matters

Invesco analyzes commercial real estate trends, showing how resilient occupancy in key sectors points to buying opportunities amid market repricing.

Preparing for the Next Chapter in Private Credit

Invesco examines 2025’s private credit outlook, from “Goldilocks” conditions and strong fundamentals to new risks from US political and economic shifts.

Private Credit: Investment Insights for 2025

Invesco’s 2025 private credit outlook explores opportunities in bank loans, direct lending, distressed credit, and CLOs amid macroeconomic uncertainty and market shifts.

CLO equity: Not Your Average Asset Class

How can CLO equity enhance your investment portfolio? Invesco explores its benefits, including diversification, active management, and strong risk-adjusted returns.

S&P 500 Equal Weight: Why Now

Is now the right time to invest in the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index? With market breadth expanding and valuations stretched, discover why investors are taking notice.

Insurance Outlook 2025

As 2025 begins, Invesco believes this year will present insurers with a more challenging environment than 2024.

2025 Senior Loan & CLO Market Outlook

2024 was a strong year-to-date for loan returns driven primarily by robust coupon, in line with our expectations.

Opportunity in real estate credit

Commercial real estate (CRE) credit yields have benefited from higher interest rates over the past two years. And while central banks have started to cut policy rates, we believe that the CRE credit sector remains attractive for three reasons.

2025 Investment Outlook: After the landing

Many of the world’s central banks, having largely succeeded in curbing inflation, are now easing monetary policies with the aim of stimulating growth. In 2025, we anticipate signs of economic deceleration to be counteracted by the supportive impact of the global rate-cutting cycle — in other words, we think we are seeing a soft landing. We expect growth to continue to slow in the near term, followed by a reacceleration through 2025, which should foster a favorable environment for risk assets globally.

Bond Market Insights for Insurers

As the Fed and other central banks cut interest rates, financial conditions should ease and support the global economy and markets. Against this backdrop, we see a number of opportunities to potentially optimize fixed income allocations in insurance portfolios.

Alternative Opportunities for Insurers | Q4 Update

In our Q4 2024 edition of Alternative Opportunities, we continue to cover views on a variety of private asset classes from Invesco Solutions and our partner firms. Within this piece, we’ll present a framework for analyzing across alternative markets to help inform insurers’ investment decisions.

2024 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions – Q3 Update

Heading into the fourth quarter, we have reached the portion of the business cycle where most major economies outside of Japan have begun to ease monetary policy. The Federal Reserve’s (Fed) recent 50 basis point (bps) cut and forecast of significant cuts to come have prepared investors for a period of lower interest rates and signals that the Fed believes their multi-year battle with inflation has come to an end.

US and global commercial real estate outlook — looking beyond 2024

A US and global real estate recovery with transaction activity re-accelerating late this year or in early 2025 and the start of a new value cycle are close in our view. Here’s a summary of our current outlook for commercial real estate (CRE) for the US and globally.

Yields have remained attractive and may maintain positive relative value

Current loan yields and spreads remained attractive with average loan coupons at close to record highs (~9.25%) and surpassing high yield bonds (~6.15%)

Trump vs. Harris: Election changes course

A presidential candidate convicted on 34 charges. An assassination attempt that left a former president bloodied but defiant. And a sitting president who pulled out of his reelection race after a disastrous debate performance. Any one of these events could have easily been the defining moment of an election. But in 2024, all that — and more — happened in the span of just 52 days.

Alternative Opportunities for Insurers | Q2 Update

In our Q2 2024 edition of Alternative Opportunities, we continue to cover views on a variety of private asset classes from Invesco Solutions and our partner firms. Within this piece, we’ll present a framework for analyzing across alternative markets to help inform insurers’ investment decisions.

2024 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions – Q2 Update

As we highlighted in the previous quarterly edition of Invesco’s Long-term capital market assumptions (CMAs), concentration in US large-capitalization equities is a risk even for moderate, globally diversified investors. We believe diversification could potentially mitigate some of this risk. However, some of the challenges that stem from overvalued concentrated equity markets are pervasive beyond the US.

Bank Loans in the Time of Higher for Longer

Markets welcomed 2024 with expectations of six rate cuts in 2024 from the US and eurozone, five cuts from the UK, and a belief that most major economies would see a period of slow growth. Now, markets are looking for just one or two cuts in the US, UK, and Eurozone, yet these economies appear to be undergoing a cyclical recovery. With prospects of a soft landing in sight, investors are assessing opportunities in risky assets in an environment of already-lofty valuations.

Timely insights: ETF usage in insurance general accounts webinar replay

In the last decade, insurer ETF AUM has more than tripled, reaching $34B in 2023. With this tremendous growth, insurers have been leveraging ETFs to solve an increasingly wide set of challenges in their portfolios, including using ETFs for core equity holdings, tweaking concentration risk, as a liquidity sleeve for both public and private fixed income markets, and pursuing income from securities lending.

Midyear Investment Outlook: Opportunities Amidst Divergence

Despite widespread expectations of a global economic slowdown in 2024, growth and inflation have continued to perform better than the consensus expected across most major economies.

Global Fixed Income Strategy Report

The Case for Senior Loans

As we continue in 2024, there has been a significant focus on the uncertainty of the US macroeconomic backdrop and its potential implications for the senior secured bank loan market. Paramount among these concerns are three key questions:

Real Estate Equity and Debt Securities Market Indicators

Listed real estate common stock ended the quarter trading at a mid-single digit discount to underlying net asset value, however, this average hides a wide dispersion of ratings, with US REITs trading up close to net asset value, but Europe and Asia still offering meaningful discounted valuations, per this metric.

Alternative Opportunities for Insurers | Q1 Update

In our Q1 2024 edition of Alternative Opportunities for Insurers, we continue to cover views on a variety of private asset classes from Invesco Solutions and our partner firms. Within this piece, we’ll present a framework for analyzing across alternative markets to help inform insurers’ investment decisions.

S&P 500 Equal Weight: Why Now

Prior to 2023, RSP has outperformed the S&P 500 by an average of 1.05% annually since its inception1. In 2023, RSP underperformed the S&P 500 as the performance of the Magnificent 7 has overshadowed the rest of the S&P 500. This has resulted in the S&P 500 reaching a record level of concentration, an unprecedented valuation and a shift towards growth. While the underperformance has been notable, we suggest three compelling reasons to consider RSP.

2024 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions – Q1 Update

The 21.5% rally of US large-cap equities over the past four months, driven by the recent AI boom, has been nothing short of spectacular. Typically, such velocity occurs after markets have experienced a recession and have begun pricing in the early stages of a recovery, with the only other instance in the post-WW2 era (1945) coinciding with the dot-com bubble.

Navigating the direct lending landscape

We recently sat down with Ron Kantowitz, Managing Director and Head of Invesco Private Debt, to review the direct lending landscape in 2023 as well as discuss market observations and themes he sees playing out in 2024.

Insurance Outlook 2024

As we enter 2024, Invesco believes this year will present insurers with many different investment opportunities in a relatively stable market and economic environment. Whereas in recent years we have observed rapid, substantial interest rate hikes along with pronounced, albeit short-lived, periods of equity volatility we believe this year will be characterized by greater market stability. While economic growth is likely to continue slowing in the face of restrictive monetary policy, we think growth is likely to improve later in the year as central banks begin easing monetary policy. Additionally, the high inflation observed following Covid is expected to continue abating (see charts below). Against this backdrop, we believe insurers will find a number of compelling portfolio opportunities in both public and private markets.

Why consider senior loan ETFs?

Senior loan’s unique combination of appealing characteristics may position it as an enticing core holding in any environment.

2024 US Loan Market Outlook

2023 was an exceptional year for loan returns (second highest on record) on both a relative and absolute basis, driven primarily by robust coupon that is near all-time highs. We expect 8% loan returns in 2024,2  again powered by strong carry partly offset by expected price erosion at the lower end of the credit quality spectrum. We forecast a 3.75% - 4.25% default rate in 2024 driven by a combination of maturity and liquidity challenges, but which are largely already priced by the market

Opportunity or caution? The outlook for European and Asian real estate

Disruption, capital market volatility, and secular demand shifts in European and Asian real estate are driving unique opportunities and growing institutional investor interest. Kevin Grundy, Managing Director, Fund Management, Europe, Invesco Real Estate, and Jason Choi, Managing Director, Senior Portfolio Manager, Asia Pacific, Invesco Real Estate, discuss the broader market environments in each region and where they are finding the most compelling investment potential.

Alternative Opportunities for Insurers

The current environment is extremely conducive to executing conservatively structured transactions. This aligns well with most insurers’ philosophy of strong risk management on both sides of the balance sheet.

2024 Investment Outlook

After nearly two years of policymakers fighting inflation, our 2024 outlook centers on the balance between growth durability versus the stickiness of inflation. Despite several quarters of restrictive monetary policy, the global economy — particularly in the US — has remained remarkably resilient. We think the global economy is entering a brief period of below-trend growth driven by recent monetary policy tightening, which we believe markets have already partially priced in. Questions remain over the path of inflation, however. In our view, the disinflation process will continue over our outlook horizon, and growth will slow further in H1 before starting to improve in H2, starting in the US. As inflation softens and policymakers begin to introduce rate cuts, we look for risk assets to see renewed strength.

Real Estate Equity and Debt Securities Market Indicators

Listed real estate common stock ended the third quarter of 2023 trading at significant discounts to net asset value across most geographies and sectors. Property fundamentals remain resilient across residential, industrial and specialty sectors while the office sector continues to face headwinds in many countries. North America and Asia Pacific regions continue to showcase stronger fundamentals relative to Europe. Real estate valuations in aggregate are less demanding versus the multiple on broader equities. Real estate fixed income yields continue to maintain a spread versus the broader fixed income market.

Global Fixed Income Strategy Report: October 2023

Third quarter US GDP data surprised to the upside, and most US data point to a stronger than expected impetus to economic growth. Consumption continues to drive growth - the labor market is solid, and, as inflation has come down, real incomes have improved. These factors have supported US growth in the most recent quarter.

2023 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions – Q3 Update

Markets have outperformed expectations heading into this year, with equities rebounding significantly (quality inside the US and value outside of the US being the two dominant factors) from the lows of 2022 and credit outpacing government bonds.

US Loan Market Snapshot: September 2023

During September, loans outperformed high yield and investment grade, which returned -1.16% and -2.45%, respectively, and year-to-date are also outpacing the 5.97% and 0.45% returns for high yield and investment grade bonds respectively.

A rise in senior secured bonds lifts high yield

An increase in secured high yield bond issuance has improved the credit quality of the high yield asset class, in the view of the Invesco High Yield Team. We speak with Senior Portfolio Managers Philip Susser and Stuart Stanley about why secured bond issuance has grown and what it means for the US high yield market.

Why pursue direct lending in the core middle market?

We define the core middle market, describe the development of the market landscape, and identify essential ingredients for success when pursuing a direct lending strategy in the core middle market.

Current bank headlines a potential tailwind for direct lending

The events of the last few weeks have elevated focus on the banking industry and its perceived role as primary financier to companies across the globe. Despite swift and strong efforts by government agencies and central banks to boost confidence and quell liquidity concerns, the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank as well as UBS’ purchase of Credit Suisse have intensified fears of a global banking crisis. The natural question for many institutional investors is how do these recent events impact private credit, including direct lending?

Q3 Outlook: Multi-sector positioning for the next phase of recovery

The global economy continues to grow at above-trend rates and we expect the current bout of inflation to be transitory. Explore how we are assessing global fixed income markets.

Senior Loans: A Closer Look For Insurers

Kevin Egan, CPA of Invesco, joins the InsuranceAUM.com Podcast to discuss senior loans, their resilience, and what insurers should know about this evolving asset class.

Real Estate Credit: Cutting Through the Noise

Charlie Rose of Invesco Real Estate discusses commercial real estate debt, bridge lending, global market trends, and where insurers may find opportunity in today’s environment.

Opportunities in Public Markets: Finding Relative Value in Fixed Income

Matt Brill, Head of North America Investment Grade Credit at Invesco, discusses finding value in fixed income, credit sector opportunities, and how insurance investors can navigate timing risk in today's evolving bond market.

What’s on the Minds of Insurance CIOs with Invesco’s Pete Miller

Welcome to Compound Insights, a podcast by CFA Society New York.

CLO Market Pulse with Ian Gilbertson of Invesco

Ian Gilbertson is the CLO Portfolio Manager and Co-Head of U.S. CLOs at Invesco.

What insurance investors should know about the US election with Invesco’s Andy Blocker

Andy Blocker is the Global Head of Public Policy and Strategic Partnerships at Invesco.

Navigating Real Estate Market Dislocation with Invesco’s Bert Crouch

Bert Crouch is the Head of North America at Invesco Real Estate

Shifts and Opportunities in Insurance Asset Allocation with Invesco’s Pete Miller

Pete Miller is the Head of Insurance Solutions, Multi-Asset Strategies at Invesco.

Where Insurance Company Assets Are Headed with Invesco's Pete Miller

Welcome to Compound Insights, a podcast by CFA Society New York. I'm your host, Rob Rowan. Today, we're speaking with Pete Miller, CFA. He is head of insurance solutions for Invesco's multi asset strategies group.

Deep dive into institutional ETFs with Invesco’s Emily McKinley

Emily McKinley is the Head of Institutional ETFs and Models at Invesco.

Distressed Credit and Special Situations with Paul Triggiani of Invesco

Paul Triggiani is the Managing Director and Head of Distressed Credit and Special Situations at Invesco Private Credit.

US Commercial Real Estate Equity with Invesco’s Dan Kubiak

Dan Kubiak is Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at Invesco Real Estate US Income Strategy.

Invesco’s Kevin Egan on Senior Secured Loans

Kevin Egan is the Senior Portfolio Manager and Co-Head of Credit Research at Invesco.

The Evolution of Direct Lending with Invesco’s Ronald Kantowitz

Join host Stewart Foley on the InsuranceAUM.com Podcast as we explore the evolution of direct lending and its role in today’s private debt markets.

Private Real Estate Debt with Invesco’s Charlie Rose

In this episode of the InsuranceAUM.com Podcast, host Stewart Foley dives into the world of private real estate debt. Explore how these transactions come together, the evolving role of private real estate debt in insurance portfolios, and what this asset class offers in a low-yield environment.