Kate Burke
Kate Burke, president of Allspring Global Investments, thinks deep client relationships and customized approaches are critical for asset management — something that artificial intelligence may not pick up on.
“It is a relationship business. And knowing your client and having those in-person discussions that pull apart the needs of you as an individual or you as a pension ... I don’t know that AI will ever fully pick that up,” she said in an interview with Pensions & Investments.
Burke joined Allspring seven months ago after spending 18 years at AllianceBernstein, where she was most recently the chief operating officer and chief financial officer. As president, she’s focusing on executing the firm’s transformation as an independent asset manager.
She sees a lot of value for AI across the ecosystem of asset management from operations to automating fund performance and flagging inconsistencies on the risk side.
“I think it (AI) will drive productivity and insights and will ideally help modernize many of the processes that are inside an asset manager,” she said.
For Burke, a major focus is developing deep client relationships, which means “not going in and selling product, but rather going in and understanding what problems they’re trying to solve,” she said.
Allspring is leaning into customization, which can still be a fairly manual and high service model. “Where we’re making investments (is) in trying to improve the speed in which we’re able to provide a higher level of customization,” she said.
Allspring, which has $580 billion in assets under advisement, became independent from Wells Fargo & Co. in November 2021. Burke is focused on the firm’s path forward and establishing Allspring’s reputation as an independent company, something she said still requires “a lot of work.”
“The U.S. is our largest market share and the dominant revenue base for us. But we have a very strong footprint in Europe and Asia that we believe is very well positioned to grow and take share,” she said.
For institutional clients including pension funds, Allspring has been spending time looking at the correlation of existing managers. “There’s an opportunity then to reduce the number of managers who do similar things, or complementary add a manager then that has the lower correlation,” she said.
Another area, amid the rise of private markets investing including private credit, has been helping institutional investors think through liquidity and the possibility of stress test scenarios.
Burke grew up in Minnesota and didn’t know much about the world of asset management. She was interested in finance and took a summer job as a bank teller to learn more. Now, as the president of an asset manager she wants to see broader gender, ethnic and socio-economic representation in the industry.
“My view is all firms should try to play a role. Whether it’s on the early acquisition of getting them in the door to the retention and development of them, over time will only enrich the whole industry,” she said.
