Good morning, everyone. Welcome to day two of our 24th Global Financials Conference. I'm Ben Budish. I cover the U.S. brokers, asset managers, and exchanges. With us from KKR, we have Chris Sheldon, he's Co-Head of Credit and Capital Markets. Chris, thanks so much for being here.
Yeah. No, thanks for having me.
I think you have some slides to run through.
What I thought I would do, just to set the stage a little bit, give a brief overview of just our credit markets business, maybe talk a little bit about what we're seeing and some of the reflections over the last 12 months on some of the themes we're seeing across the business. Then I'll pivot a little bit into the markets in terms of tailwinds for credit and why we think those are going to persist even in some of this volatility, and then a little bit on how we're tackling it. Then we can go, and you can pepper me with some questions, and we can move from there. I did hear last year there was a fire alarm during this session, so it was our competitor. Hopefully that competitor doesn't get back at us.
But if I just do a quick snapshot of us today, we're $300 billion across our credit business, 250 professionals, global. You can see 12 cities, 10 countries. We think about the business in three areas. One are leveraged credit business, which is everything liquid traded, both corporate and ABS. We run a number of different strategies there. That's about $143 billion. The private credit, which is the center, similar sized, but think about it as two different businesses. Our corporate private credit business, so think direct lending, junior debt, and then our asset-based finance business, which may be surprising to some of you. Our asset-based finance business, which in the press doesn't get as much as the direct lending business, is actually larger at $91 billion versus the close to $50 billion in our corporate private credit business.
And then we have $11 billion in our strategic investment group, which is really structured equity, hybrid capital solutions. Something that we'll go in a little bit more detail, but is really, I think end up becoming a more permanent asset allocation as it is developing as an asset class. About 10+ years ago, we combined our credit principal business with our capital markets business primarily to be solutions providers for our borrowers and our clients. It's really paying dividends, particularly around origination, and supplying our clients with a lot of diversified co-invest. The last thing at the bottom is, as many of you know, we own an insurance company, Global Atlantic, an annuity business. We closed that transaction in early 2021, and fully integrated within the credit business. So that investment office rolls into our credit markets platform.
If you look at our capital, it's scaled meaningfully since that period of acquiring the insurance business. It's up 50% since 2021, and with management fees up 32%. Even year to date, we're up double digit. So if I think about reflections on the last 12 months on our business, one, credit allocations are continuing to flow. Despite some of the noise and some of the press we read or hear about regarding private credit, we're still seeing the asset class see inflows. I think a lot of it, which I'll go into some of the tailwinds in terms of the attractiveness of risk-reward and relative value. As a result, we're seeing our management fees continuing to grow, and we expect them to continue to grow.
The other big theme, which I don't think a lot of people talk about, is we're seeing a much more trend to diversified income and narrowing their LP or their GP exposures to one. You're still seeing some allocators allocate per asset class, but we're actually now much more seeing multi-asset class partnerships across public, private, corporate, ABF, senior subordinated. I think they're relying on us to do the relative value. I think they're going to people that have scale, breadth, and actually can assess risk-adjusted return, particularly given the volatility and how quickly that rel val can change across the credit spectrum. If you actually rewind five years ago, it was very difficult for an allocator to get diversified income, right?
If you just pick the ABF sector alone, that's not a new asset class, but really in a multi-asset type way, it is essentially newer to allocators because you need big teams. You need a resi team, a consumer team, a commercial team, a transportation team, a renewables team. To be able to do that rel val across the board, if you wanted to get that exposure, you had to hire multiple different managers to do that. We're also seeing, as I mentioned, this capital solutions growth and really bespoke capital solutions both in the below investment grade and then last bullet in private IG. You're seeing much more bespoke financing to help companies grow.
Some of that is off balance sheet, like in the private IG world, where people are financing and using the technology no different than real estate sale leaseback, to more capital solutions, hybrid structured equity. A lot of times they're looking for incremental help in the boardroom. A lot of that sourcing for us is coming from our PE channel. Credit has had a good run in terms of allocations and flow over the last handful of years. We think that the tailwinds are going to continue, and a big part of it is, one, rates are higher for longer. We're seeing it today just given where the ten-year is. This is our forecast versus consensus. Maybe that consensus is creeping up over the last few days. However, if you think about in the low interest rate environment, private equity's returns are here, treasuries are down here.
In a higher interest rate environment, those are compressed. As a result, credit is just naturally going to look much more attractive from a risk-adjusted basis. So we think that's going to continue to compound. There's also a ton of demand just for credit, and then we use the AI here in the top right. If you look at the CapEx from the hyperscalers over the next five years, it's $7.6 trillion forecasted. That'll get financed through public markets, equity markets, but they're going to rely a big part on private IG as a result. There's still a lot of dry powder in private equity. The last time I checked, they're not going to return that capital. So that will start turning on. We're starting to see that turn on.
Credit allocations are evolving and becoming more permanent and, as I sort of mentioned before, this multi-asset partnerships and multi-asset capital is a big trend we're seeing and will continue. So here's just sort of an example of a balanced portfolio across that. The other big driver is this, and our Head of Global Macro and Asset Allocation and CIO of KKR's Balance Sheet talks about this a lot, Henry McVey, is there's been a big trend for capital from capital-intensive businesses to capital light, and the capital-intensive businesses are trying to become more capital light. Because if you've been a public company, you've been capital light, you've been rewarded, as you can see in the blue line. If you've been capital-intensive, you haven't been rewarded in the stock prices in the purple line. So you're just seeing this big trend to accelerate growth.
How do you accelerate growth is raise capital. If you can do that off balance sheet, it's super attractive and it's been accretive. If you think about what we're doing across our asset-based finance, we've done financing facilities for PayPal, Lenovo, Volvo, Harley-Davidson, and immediately after doing those transactions, the stock price is up 5%-10%. You're going to see this technology get rolled out, and it's still not known by all, and there's still a lot of CFOs or CEOs that are looking at what their competitors are doing and say, "I want some of that." We're starting to see that origination really start playing through, and fueling the ABF business, our private IG business, and our capital solutions businesses.
Which is illustrative of what we've done in just private IG year to date, which is over $80 billion of transactions either originated or placed, which is up 104% versus all of last year, so for six months. As you can see, it's not just data center from the logos. It's not just data center. It's broad-based across all sectors. It's energy, healthcare, tech, consumer. Really that technology of this off-balance sheet, giving equity treatment for these companies, not burdening their ratings is something that is flowing through the corporate world. There's multiple conversations every day, new conversations every day happening of saying, "Wait, how does this work? How can I get access to this capital?" Which is exciting. Finally, before we go to questions, how are we navigating the market?
I think the key takeaways are if you look at the supply and demand imbalance in the traditional lev-f in market, there's more capital than there is deal flow right now. Spreads are tight. We hear it a lot when we talk to investors. How are we navigating that? One, just keep it at high quality and diversified. If you are running diversified portfolios at high single-digit income, which is what the yields are, it's hard not to make money. I think it's where you have bad portfolio construction or concentrated bets, whether by issuers or sectors, is where that tails off. Then focus on the contrary bets where the supply and demand imbalance is in your favor. Those would be areas like this capital solutions where there's just not enough capital for the needs and the financings.
Regions like Asia where 80% of the financings is done by banks, and they have a box, and they're less flexible to be able to go after it. Origination is key. You got to make your own luck. We're big internally focused on how do we tweak origination, how do we improve origination? Are we covering sponsors the right way? Are we covering corporates the right way? Are we partnering with banks the right way? Constantly looking at that model because that's going to be the key, particularly in a market like this where M&A has been depressed.
We're also trying to take advantage of this multi-asset class partnerships so that the teams break down barriers, have a collaborative approach across the firm, not just within credit markets. I think that's where KKR in terms of one P&L is actually pretty additive and able to go mobilize pretty quickly. That's sort of setting the stage of what we're seeing and what we're doing, and maybe I'll pass the baton. You start us off with some questions.
Yeah, you bet. Well, thanks for all that, Chris. I think most of these are going to be sort of in the credit space. For KKR, I think your credit AUM is up about 35% since your 2024 Investor Day. I think you said in the last quarter you expect a record third-party credit fundraising year. What makes you so confident in that growth? Talk about the main drivers, the LP types, where you're seeing the most appetite. How do you think that evolves over the next few years?
Yeah, some of it is the trends that I sort of mentioned where from a risk-reward standpoint, it's attractive given where yields are. I think the private credit has now become a permanent asset allocation in people's allocation. I think as a result, it's worked. I think what people don't talk enough about is in this environment, assuming you don't raise any new capital, the big shift that we've seen, particularly as asset classes mature in credit, particularly within this private credit, is they no longer desire or take the income. They're allowing us to reinvest the income. If you just think about that, if you're earning high single digits or double-digit 10% type cash on cash, and you're reinvesting that, you're just compounding and doubling every seven years. I don't think enough people are talking about that shift in the market.
The vintage 1.0 of these direct lending funds were LP GP structures where you take capital in, you invest it, you distribute out the income. Now they're evergreen structures where you're just compounding that out. That's even before some of the market tailwinds that we're seeing. In addition, I think private IG is in its infancy. Really, it's being fueled by insurance capital. I think pension capital will follow. There's no reason why the pension capital can't take 5% of their core fixed income strategies and put it into the illiquid. It's the same essential risk, just giving up the liquidity, and you're getting paid 150 to 200 basis points incremental yield. There's a ton of different trends, whether it be Asia, whether it be the reval, whether it be the compounding, that we feel pretty confident that this growth is going to continue.
Okay. You mentioned private IG. I guess two questions. How do you think about the size of that opportunity? You mentioned insurance is a big buyer, pensions are maybe starting to become a big buyer. The other question, maybe talk a bit about KKR's origination capabilities.
Yeah.
It's something that you guys talked to a little bit, not as much as some of your competitors, but your platforms, where you source assets and the like.
Yeah, it's a huge opportunity. If you think about the direct lending at $1.9 trillion, then we just put up the AI CapEx over the next five years, need is $7.6 trillion. Gives you a sense that's just one sector. Now, some of that will get financed through the public markets, but even if you look at the investment grade index and you say all those hyperscalers max out the highest percentage that we think is prudent, around 3% issuer in the index, you still have a gap of $6 trillion. Obviously, digital infrastructure is going to drive a lot of that. But you're also seeing this capital light, capital heavy, which is just much larger in terms of all the other sectors are going to drive that growth there. There's a huge opportunity there.
I think it's how you take advantage of it, how you raise the capital associated with it, as you sort of alluded or I mentioned, is that starting with insurance, but I think pension is going to follow quickly.
Then the origination side?
Oh, yeah. On the origination side. Look, how we're tackling it is, as I sort of mentioned, we're tweaking in terms of constantly tweaking in terms of how we're making sure we're covering corporates, covering sponsors, covering banks the right way. But we have a massive infrastructure franchise. We have a massive private equity franchise. It's teaching those investment professionals to understand what we're doing in insurance, what we're doing in private IG to be able to source transactions.
Every time we do a transaction, there's sort of an education process that goes out to all the teams globally of sort of saying, "Okay, where is this repeatable in some of your contacts that you may have across your different industries?" That's the one difference that I think we do have a little bit of different competitive advantage is that one P&L where people don't just wear a jersey on their back that says their asset class or their investment team. Really, people at KKR think about, I work for KKR first, then I'm within my group, whether it be credit markets, then I'm with my group, whether it be asset-based financing.
Got it. We have talked about the hyperscaler opportunity a couple of times. Maybe let us talk about AI a little bit. It is becoming a really kind of defining allocation theme, I think, across the sector. KKR, I think you participate in a number of ways, infra equity, Helix, now the credit franchise we are talking about. Maybe I have two questions there. First, I guess, how does KKR actually participate? What types of investments are you making, equity, debt, and how would you sort of say the platform is positioned for success? Then second, just given the demand, particularly for financing data centers, chips, and AI-related initiatives, how do you think about the opportunity set and at the same time, the risks?
Yeah. We have touched a little bit on the opportunity side. It is there. It is massive. I think the key to all of this is having the right origination and having the right underwriting, and understanding the risks you are taking. It is very easy to underwrite the offtake, the credit, whether it be one of the hyperscalers. It is private IG, it is an investment-grade offtake. You can do that credit underwriting. It is much harder to actually understand the asset, the location, the power associated, where is that coming, and then structure around all those. That is where I think you really need to bring all the expertise to the table. You mentioned our infrastructure team, which knows the sector, knows the assets, what is the repurpose of assets if the lease isn't there.
We bring our real estate team that understands what is normal, what is market with regards to project finance and structuring these things. Then you bring the credit professionals that are able to structure around this in the documents and understand the credit risk. I think that is where you are starting to see some slippage and some of the risks, to touch on the risks, where you essentially have some tourists in the market where they do not have all that skill set. They may not truly understand or structure how a lease can be broken, or they may not truly understand if the lease is broken, what is the value of that asset and where it sits, or how the energy gets to that asset.
I think that is where bringing our infrastructure team and the Helix capital to be able to truly understand all of those dynamics are going to be super important. The other risk I just would highlight is the capacity, the financing capacity risk. I think we are spending a lot of times thinking about, okay, at $7.6 trillion, how is that going to work? Yes, you can tap some of the public markets, but a lot of them already tapped the public markets. They can tap the equity markets, and you are starting to see the hyperscalers' spread widen. Where is that capital coming from? From a credit investor landscape, portfolio construction is just as important as credit picking. As a result, you are not going to all of a sudden get 40% exposure to the data center in your private IG portfolio.
Something needs to give in that realm where either new capital really needs to get formed to go after this. That CapEx $7.6 trillion may come down a little bit, or these companies need to grow into and produce some cash flow to offset some of that.
Interesting. Okay, maybe another question on asset-backed finance more broadly. I guess, where would you say we are today in terms of institutional adoption, and how much of that addressable opportunity do you think is accessible for alternative asset managers?
Yeah. It's still early innings. If you think about it reminds me of the direct lending market five, seven years ago. There's still a lot of organizations that are still starting building out their private credit allocations. It's worked, right? I think despite some of the noise in Q1 around direct lending and the retail redemptions, actually performance, what we're seeing and when we talk to clients is very strong, and it's actually working. You've had high income, low volatility, and relatively modest defaults throughout that cycle. I think people are sort of sitting here and saying, "Okay, now I'm building out my direct lending. What comes next is asset-based finance." There's a lot of benefits to it, which is inflation protected, less correlation, and as you get this trend toward multi-asset and building more broad, diversified income, asset-based finance is still in the early innings.
If you think about that, just on the institutional side, if you think about on the wealth side, we really haven't seen real or any growth in terms of individual investors really participating in these structures. That will naturally come, which I think is important. I think the main difference, I think, in asset-based finance is the barriers to entry are much higher. You need scale to be able to afford all these different asset types and these teams to be able to underwrite that risk. If it took 10 years to figure out who the large scale providers are in corporate private credit or direct lending, I think it's already been decided who the scale players are in asset-based finance.
Got it. Maybe let's bring Global Atlantic in. How do they fit into the equation? I presume they're a buyer of some of these assets that KKR originates. But maybe talk about how that all works internally. A big part of the thesis, I remember some years ago when you guys were talking about this transaction, was that tighter integration, facilitating the ability to kind of scale up your private IG business.
Yeah.
Put some color on that.
Yeah, it's fully integrated into KKR, into our credit and capital markets business. I think about Global Atlantic, our annuity business, is a true multiplier to what we're doing across the business. It provides alignment in terms of when we're alignment and scale when we're coming to certain transactions, particularly of some of these large transactions across private IG and asset-based finance. It's really enabling our capital markets business as some of these large transactions are, and I think that you'll see really huge opportunity to take advantage of that aspect of our business, is underwriting and distributing some of these transactions. So it's fully integrated now. We made that shift of about a year and a half ago, we bought the remaining 37% of Global Atlantic, really for the purpose to turbo that integration and that alignment, to be able to maximize that multiplier effect.
All right. Maybe moving a little bit of a different direction. You also oversee capital markets at KKR. So how would you describe the current capital markets backdrop? It does seem like KKR has been able to get a lot done lately, but can you talk specifically about the sponsor side of the business, which seems to be particularly challenging over the last few years?
Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned our private equity folks. They've done a phenomenal job, and I think they've in terms of deployment and actually monetization in this environment, which is a challenging M&A environment, which is not surprising, right? I think you have a lot of uncertainty out there, a lot of geopolitical noise, inflation, still some tariff noise. In addition, we've been in this rolling recession where there's been certain sectors that have been in recession, and some that are getting out, and some that are going back in. So it's been a challenging environment if you're either an investor or a CEO in the C-suite of a company on do you make an acquisition, and what are the different dynamics in play to give you confidence around that multiple.
A few guys have learned their lesson in the GFC, where linear deployment, diversification, geographic exposures, I think that has enabled them to actually get a lot done because they're seeing monetizations of returning capital, and then their operational improvement. Not everyone has all that playbook or are learning some of those lessons that we learned in the GFC, where concentrated deployment in 2020 and 2021. They're sort of sitting here being frozen a little bit. We're starting to see that unleash a little bit. We're starting to see activity pick up, I think a little bit has helped with some of the rebound in certain sectors, whether it be software, where you've seen those multiples, where we're actually seeing a potential new LBO of a software company, which is, we'll see. But I think that is helpful.
I think the nice thing about KKR is we're so diversified across our capital markets business. Even in this environment, we're still putting up relatively strong numbers year-over-year as a result that shows sort of the diversification of the platform. Then when it does open up, it'll relieve hopefully some of the supply and demand imbalance.
What do you make of the recent move in longer-term rates that kind of slow things down?
Yeah.
You talk about diversification.
Yeah.
Vintage.
Yeah, I think it slows things down. I think all of this noise, what we need is just a little bit more stability and certainty because if you're sitting in that C-suite of a company and you want to make an acquisition, you just want to know what the future looks like or have some ability to predict that and take a view. I think there's just too much uncertainty out there that is sort of freezing up. There's a lot of capital, as I mentioned before, there's more capital coming into the credit markets that is able to finance it. I think where we just have to be cognizant of is does that capital come in without the deal flow? I think that's where scale and breadth matters to be able to originate these opportunities.
A big part of our origination over the last couple of years in this lower M&A environment has been from being the incumbent lenders. Knowing those businesses, pitching them new business. Business that we know, companies that we know, the companies that we've been financing for 5, 10 years, and being able to have that conviction.
Got it. Maybe just one last question on your capital markets business specifically. Private IG is now becoming a bigger part of the story. How do you see that evolving? What's the historical mix between sub-investment grade, investment grade? How do you see the mix evolving over time?
Yeah. As I mentioned, I think it's going to be a huge opportunity. I think we've said it publicly that should be hundreds of millions of dollars annually of capital markets coming out of IG related. It's been much smaller, primarily as a result of it's a newer asset class. I think the people are talking about private IG like it's been a defined asset class for the last 10 years. In reality, it's not. The vast majority of the private IG exposure is asset-based finance or high-grade asset-based finance. What gets a lot of the press is some of these big, large corporate deals or the digital infrastructure deals. From our standpoint, as long as we're continuing to originate, as long as we're continuing to raise that capital, it's just about execution on the capital markets side.
Anything else investors should be thinking about in terms of the economics to KKR? I think everyone understands from a management fee basis, there's a difference between an IG SMA and a direct lending fund, but just on the capital markets side.
On the capital markets, as mentioned, I think we've publicly said that it should be hundreds of millions of dollars of capital markets or transaction fees annually.
Yeah. Fair enough. Maybe pivoting a little bit to the direct lending market. I think you manage around $40 billion of direct lending AUM. How would you describe the health of that portfolio? Can you talk a bit about the mix by asset class? How much is software versus other types of investments? Any divergence in performance within your portfolio?
Yeah. Performance is strong across our pools of institutional direct lending and our non-traded BDC. A big part of that is the diversification of the assets and running a diversified portfolio. Obviously, there's a lot of noise and press around software in Q1 and potential increase in spike of defaults. We just really haven't seen that play out. We haven't seen it through our fundamentals. We broadly have avoided the ARR lending in software, so annual recurring revenue. We've been more focused on sort of sticky enterprise software with producing free cash flow, and so cash flow lenders as a result. Performance is strong. I would step back and just sort of say people are a lot of times people are talking about other historically low default rates that we've been seeing across credit. That's true in certain markets.
That's true in IG corporate, that's true in high-yield bonds. That necessarily hasn't been the case in the broadly syndicated market or the direct lending market. We've been sort of hovering around 4%-5% annual default rates for the last few years in both of those markets. As a result, that's elevated for three years in a row. We don't envision a big spike of defaults. But we expect that we're sort of in this rolling recession, where it's going to be a lot about portfolio construction and credit-taking. I think the harder thing for the outside community is there's no index for the direct lending market. People are trying to look at individual portfolios and extrapolate what's going on in the broader market, and I think there's going to be a real dispersion in returns by manager as a result.
I think a lot of that's based on portfolio construction. It's based on vintage of when they're getting flows into the market, whether that be they have retail flows and they're getting through 2020 and 2021, they're getting a lot of flows in, they're going to be overexposed to those vintages. That's not necessarily true of what's going on in the broader market. The software exposure where we are, we're under the market. We're around that 20% exposure. I think the market's closer to 25%. As I mentioned, I think the devil will be details on what type of software exposure. Is that ARR? Is it larger businesses? Is it diversified? Is it sticky? Is it open heart surgery to remove that stuff? We feel broadly good about what we're seeing across the private credit spectrum.
Got it. Given your comments on kind of the health of the portfolio, it sounds like you're not seeing anything unique with the software investments versus-
No. Fundamentals for the most part have been strong. We haven't seen that play through. Obviously, AI has been a topic. We're talking about it, but really where you want to be focused in this is close to the data, right? Talking to our CTO of KKR, software needs to house data, and each organization has a lot of sources of data that need software to house it. A lot of times, those different sources of data need to communicate to each other, and they need software to communicate across those different sources of data. AI isn't really useful unless you have that connectivity and house quality data. There's just a lot of software companies that are going to be integral to be able to access AI and actually fuel growth.
I think in many cases, AI is going to be a good sort of fuel to the fire for these software companies. There'll be definitely some casualties, and there's going to be definitely a lot of dispersion in the market. It's just the closer you can get to the data, I think is where you're going to be much happier in your investments.
Got it. Let me get your view on the retail channel, particularly as it pertains to credit. I know for KKR, K-FIT's redemption requests in Q2 were well below that 5% quarterly limit. I guess the high-level question, the current retail appetite for credit, what you guys are hearing from advisors, and then for your product specifically, what would you attribute this sort of much lower level of redemptions to?
Look, I think the broader community and the retail wealth community, individual investor community, has gotten a little bit more comfortable with direct lending. It's worked in their portfolio. They've seen income. They're not seeing default spike. You're also seeing some of the software multiples rebound as a result. I think that has helped a little bit of some of these redemptions. I think that with regards to K-FIT and our particular non-traded BDC, it's still relatively small relative to some of our peers, and definitely small relative to our overall AUM, where it's less than 1% of our AUM. Performance there has been very strong, which I think has helped. I think our vintage is helpful because we are later in that vintage versus some of our peers.
We don't have overexposed to some of that 2020 or 2021 higher leverage when it was definitely a borrower's market. That's helped. I think also are we seeing massive flows come back in? No. We're starting to see some modest flows come in and stabilize. Often when you read, they don't talk about the net flows, or the gross inflows. They just talk about the outflows. There are flows still coming in. As I sort of mentioned, I think there's going to be new credit asset classes as a result, where I think ABF could be a huge opportunity to fill the void, just as credit filled the void for real estate, just as you've seen the growth in private equity in these structures, wealth vehicles or infrastructure in these wealth vehicles.
I think that wealth is always going to be a big part of the market. I think it's very important to have a diversified funding source, whether that be institutional wealth and insurance. I think that's one thing at KKR we've done well, is having that diversified funding source across credit.
Great. Maybe with the last little bit of time here, let's talk about the APAC region. I think KKR has been there for over 20 years. You were a first mover in the region. How are supply and demand dynamics for credit in particular sort of changing that opportunity across public and private markets? Maybe talk a bit about what KKR is doing from the credit side. I think most of your activity has been on the equity side.
Yeah. I do feel like if we're going to be here in the next handful of years, Asia's going to be too big to ignore. It reminds me of Europe 20, 25 years ago. You look at the private equity capital that's flowing into the region, you look at where the financing is coming from. Most of that's bank, 80% of that banks. If you just look at the relative to private credit capital relative to PE capital in the region, and you look at that comparison, that ratio to where Europe is today, that would create a need for about $800 billion of private credit capital. I think it's coming. It's just a question of how quickly is it coming.
What we're doing is we're definitely investing in the region primarily to your point, because we've been in the region for 20 years on the equity side. We now have mature platforms in private equity, infrastructure, real estate there. We have credit professionals and integrated them in all of the offices across Asia, to where we are really taking advantage of what we think is going to be the first-mover advantage. We've raised a couple private credit funds. We have a liquid strategy in Asia. As we see this trend for multi-asset private credit or multi-asset credit solutions, Asia is going to be a big part of that. It offers uncorrelated risk. You're seeing Pan Asia trade increase as a result of some of this tariff noise and geopolitical activity.
It's pretty interesting, and as I sort of mentioned, it's going to be too big to ignore in a handful of years.
Maybe just one last question on Asia. Maybe talk a bit about the challenges of the market. How fragmented is it? Does that create higher barriers to entry?
100%. If all of us decide to go move to Asia, we'd probably move to Hong Kong or Singapore, and that's a fraction of what we're doing there. You need local teams, which is the approach we've taken, which is putting individual credit people side by side with our private equity and infrastructure and real estate colleagues in the number of offices. The barrier entries are super high. We're riding the tailwinds of our private equity franchise and relationships there. I think the insurance capital is helpful, particularly because the second-largest annuity market outside the U.S. is in Asia. How do you unleash that aspect to help fuel that credit business faster, particularly to get scale? Because I think scale and first-mover advantage is going to be super important.
Our hit ratio of when someone wants to allocate to Asia credit, has made the decision, is the highest across the credit platform, just because the competition isn't there. It's just getting that adoption of individuals to allocate to Asia.
With that, we're out of time, Chris.
Sorry.
We'll have to leave it there, but thank you so much.
Yeah. Thank you.
Appreciate it.