On September 18, 2026, the 2026 Global Macro Allocation Insight Summit — part of the Insight Forum Series — was held at The Ritz-Carlton, Beijing Financial Street. The summit was jointly hosted by Insights & Mandates (I&M) and Marsh (formerly Mercer), one of the world's leading investment consulting and advisory firms, with First Plus Asset Management and Guotai Haitong Securities serving as co-sponsors.

Held under the theme "Navigating Direction and Managing Risk in an Age of Divergence," the summit brought together nearly 200 decision-makers and senior investors from leading institutions in China and abroad. The event drew a full house, with particularly strong engagement from institutional investors. Against the backdrop of an increasingly complex global political and economic order, the summit offered the industry a forward-looking exchange of views drawn from across the global investment community.

In the morning session, Zhuang Yuan, Director of Asset Allocation at First Plus Asset Management, delivered a keynote address titled "From Single-Asset to Cross-Asset: Asset Allocation Practices in an Age of Divergence," offering a systematic analysis of the structural shifts now reshaping global asset allocation.

He observed that while market dispersion has not disappeared, a more pronounced pattern of stratification has emerged: correlations across sectors and factors are declining, widening the scope for structural diversification within individual markets, while correlations between equities, bonds and credit spreads are rising, underscoring the growing scarcity of traditional cross-asset hedging tools. In response, and drawing on First Plus's own investment experience, he outlined a three-tiered, progressive approach to allocation:

• Diversification within a single market: capturing excess returns through refined style rotation and factor diversification within an individual market;
• Diversification across markets: allocating across regions within the same global asset class to capture the benefits of geographic diversification;
• Diversification across asset classes: as the correlation between traditional equities and bonds turns positive, actively introducing asset classes such as structured credit that exhibit low correlation with traditional assets, to build portfolios that are genuinely resilient.

In the flagship panel that followed — "A Global Perspective on Institutional Investors' Preferences for Asset Classes and Investment Themes" — Yang Lu, Chief Executive Officer of First Plus Asset Management, joined a panel of industry peers for an in-depth exchange. Addressing questions of current concern to institutional investors — hedging across major asset classes, private credit allocation, and whether long-horizon themes such as AI infrastructure over the next three to five years warrant "satellite" or "core" positioning — Mr. Lu shared First Plus's global investment practice:

• Hedging concentration risk: In the current market environment, traditional diversification tools are losing effectiveness. First Plus anchors portfolios in fundamental factors, pairing fundamental quantitative strategies with medium- and low-frequency quantitative approaches to give institutional capital robust downside protection and the flexibility to adapt across cycles.
• Embracing structured assets: With non-bank credit expanding rapidly across Asia-Pacific, First Plus has identified compelling value in Asia-Pacific asset-backed securities (ABS) strategies. These strategies focus on carefully screened underlying assets — including auto leases, residential mortgages and infrastructure loans — with structured tranching used to isolate risk effectively. Against a backdrop of historically low default rates, the strategy can generate low-volatility, high-cash-flow returns 50 to 100 basis points above comparably rated corporate bonds, turning market uncertainty into a durable source of return through the cycle.

In an age of divergence shaped by the retreat of globalization and the rise of regional localization, sharp swings in asset values present both a challenge and a test of managers' insight. As an asset manager with deep roots across Asia-Pacific, First Plus Asset Management remains grounded in fundamental research as its starting point and is committed to building an investment framework capable of navigating multiple market cycles. We look forward to continuing to stand alongside our clients through every stage of the cycle ahead.