Episode summary
Why UBC Investment Management CEO Dawn Jia says portfolios need nutrients, not asset-class labels
Summary
Dawn Jia argues that portfolio construction should be built around economic exposures, not asset-class labels. She says UBC Investment Management’s total portfolio approach looks through categories like infrastructure or real estate to find the underlying return drivers, which helps the fund stay flexible and identify mispricings across public and private markets. In one example, the team saw a valuation gap between public and private real estate, put on a trade, and, Jia says, generated a 30% return in 12 months.
She also says market concentration has become a structural constraint on active management. With a small group of AI- and chip-linked names driving a large share of index returns, Jia argues that beating the benchmark often means taking on even more concentration risk than the index itself. That has pushed the fund to look for broader sources of alpha, including regional ideas, long-short strategies and credit, while deglobalization makes opportunity sets more local and less synchronized.
On responsible investing, Jia says climate risk is now well understood by most portfolio companies, but social risk is the newer frontier. She describes redesigning a quant manager’s strategy around a climate-aware benchmark instead of dropping the manager over weak proxy voting, and says leadership has shifted from hierarchy to influence, alignment and collaboration.
Key takeaways
- Dawn Jia says UBCIM’s total portfolio approach focuses on economic exposures, not asset-class labels, to improve flexibility and risk control.
- Jia says index concentration has become so severe that outperformance can require taking more concentration risk than the benchmark itself.
- She says the fund found a public-versus-private real estate valuation gap and, after a 12-month trade, booked a 30% return.
- Jia says responsible investing is embedded in manager selection, and UBCIM redesigned a quant strategy around a climate-aware benchmark.
- She says climate risk is broadly recognized, but social risk around equality, indigenous rights and child labor is the next major focus.
Notable quotes
“you just look through the asset class label and really looking at the economic exposure of each assets”
“we observed valuation difference between the public real estate sector versus the private real estate sector”
“in 12 months that trade generated a 30% return and we said okay we can see that the valuation level is converging”
“in order to to beat the market index you have to become even more concentrated than the index in order to outperform”
How the episode opens
Welcome to the Allocators Playbook. I'm Lauren Bailey, deputy editor at Markets Group. My guest today is Don Gia, president and chief executive officer of UBC Investment Management Corporation.
Don has led the organization through a period of significant transformation, advancing its total portfolio approach, strengthening its investment capabilities and fostering a culture centered on collaboration, long-term thinking, and continuous improvement. Today we'll discuss how the fund is navigating an increasingly concentrated public market, why culture is central to investment success, how the organization measures long-term value beyond benchmark returns, and where Don views opportunities for institutional investors in the years ahead. Don, welcome.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for having me, Lauren. So, Don, I just want to dive in and start with your internal culture because investment organizations often talk about process and performance, but culture is much harder to build as we all know. As CEO, what are the most important values or behaviors you've tried to instill across UBC investments and why?
In our value statement, we have three of them. And I would say that the top two are the ones that I emphasize the most. And every team member also live that value every day, which is find a better way and move forward together.
Find a better way means that we are never happy with status quo. We never want to stand still in everything we do. No matter how big or small it is, we always ask people to try to find a better way.
Is there a better way? Is there a uh a better solution? Is there a new product, new data piece, new service available that we can make our return better?
We can make a volatility lower. So we we do that with everything. that's embedded in our DNA because one of the pursuit for our organization is seek of excellence.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- portfolio construction
- market concentration
- active management constraints
- private real assets vs reits
- responsible investing & social risk
Companies and tickers mentioned
- UBC Investment Management
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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