Practitioners' Insights: Asset Allocation Under Uncertainty: Perspectives from an Asset Owner

Jayesh Bhansali is the chief investment officer at IRIQIV, a multi-family office. He currently serves as an independent director for VanEck Mutual Funds and as an independent advisor to Connecticut Public Broadcasting Retirement Plan. Additionally, he serves as an independent trustee for the Judge Baker Children's Center, a Harvard Medical School affiliate that focuses on children's mental health. He also serves in a similar capacity at Under One Roof, which is dedicated to offering quality affordable housing for elderly people.

Previously, he served over two decades as the managing director, Lead Portfolio Manager for General Account’s Fixed Income Immediate Annuity portfolio and Head of Quantitative Fixed-income Portfolio Management and Global Derivatives at TIAA with $70 bln in combined AUM. During his tenure at TIAA, he was a member of the core Chief Investment Officer team to the General Account ($240 bln. in AUM), where his responsibilities ran the gamut of strategic and tactical asset allocation, portfolio construction, risk budgeting, ALM, tail risk management as well as capital optimization decisions. Prior to TIAA he worked with Citibank / Citicorp’s Analytics & Information Technology Solutions Group and in investment banking division with ICICI, respectively.

He has presented at various institutional investors’ conferences both in the US and overseas, on contemporary topics such as managing systemic risk, the alpha / beta optimization, asset allocation under uncertainty, smart beta strategies, harvesting volatility risk premia, and longevity risk management. He also chaired a thought leadership roundtable on “ETFs Systemic Risk: Fact or Fiction?” jointly organized by the CFA Institute, CFA Society of New York and NASDAQ.

He is a member of the CFA Institute’s Standards of Practice Council, which is responsible for fostering the integrity of the capital markets through the development of professional standards. Mr. Bhansali has taught at Columbia Business School as an adjunct professor of finance and currently is an adjunct faculty member at Fordham University’s Gabelli Business School. He holds the CFA and CAIA designation. Mr. Bhansali has earned a MS in financial engineering from the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering. He is a former Chartered Accountant and Cost Accountant from India. He is also an avid follower of the ancient Vipassana meditation practice over the past 25 years.

Sivananth "Siva" Ramachandran, CFA, is the Director of Capital Markets Policy, India at CFA Institute. In his role, he is responsible for advocating policy positions on issues that impact Indian capital markets, including corporate governance, ESG, and financial reporting, to name a few. Siva was part of a SEBI working group that reviewed the related party transaction regulations. He is frequently quoted in media. Siva has nearly 13 years of experience in financial services. Prior to joining the CFA Institute, he spent five years at Morningstar, and led their global index product development team. He also served as a spokesperson for sustainability at Morningstar India. Prior to his time at Morningstar, Siva spent nearly five years at MSCI where he co-authored research papers on small cap investing, portfolio construction, and economic exposure. Siva has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. He also holds the chartered financial analyst (CFA) and professional risk management (PRM) designations, and the fundamentals of sustainability accounting (FSA) credential provided by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB).