In that environment, pressuring managers to cut fees became a lower priority, Mr. Banerjee said, noting that the average fees asset owners reported paying over the past year "actually went up a little bit."
And while the past 18 months saw numerous reports about seamless transitions to digital client services, that asset owner focus on "who we can work with" more often than not favored those bulge-bracket managers offering both muscular institutional sales capabilities and good performance.
While digital due diligence success stories were many, Asian asset owners' "appetite to work with smaller, lesser known (managers) seems to have taken a little bit of a hit" over the past year vis-a-vis managers with well-known brands, Mr. Banerjee said.
The survey suggested a pickup in risk aversion when it came to signing off to their trustees on a lesser known manager, he said.
Smaller managers' ability, pre-pandemic, to meet asset owners repeatedly helped them level the playing field with top-tier managers, but for the past 18 months "that element has taken a bit of a hit because people just are not meeting as much these days," he said.
For the latest year, Pacific Investment Management Co., the Newport Beach, Calif.-based fixed-income manager, got the highest marks from asset owners in the survey's rankings, garnering Coalition Greenwich's "quality leader 2021" designation.
Mr. Banerjee said PIMCO came out on top for both solid performance and being a step ahead of competitors in figuring out the client service implications of global pandemic lockdowns.
PIMCO's success was all the more impressive because the survey showed asset owners focused on shifting allocations to segments such as international equities and alternatives outside of the firm's fixed-income focus, Mr. Banerjee said.
A net 27% of 124 asset owners interviewed did say they were looking to significantly increase allocations to global fixed income over the coming three years, but the corresponding figures for global equity, private equity, private debt, real estate debt and infrastructure debt were between 38% and 62%.
Domestic fixed income, meanwhile, looked to be the biggest loser, with a net 25% of respondents saying they would look to significantly decrease exposures over the next three years.
Meanwhile, the survey pointed to a healthy environment for money managers looking to boost their business in the region.
Overall institutional assets for the region, ex-Japan and ex-Australia, rose 8% through May to $16.2 trillion, while the portion outsourced to external managers rose 10.7% to $3.6 trillion, or 22.3% of the total.
The survey report noted that Asia's institutional investor landscape continues to become less concentrated — with the top 15 pools of institutional assets in the region accounting for only 62% of total assets, down from 84% just five years ago.
Mr. Banerjee said the growth of insurance companies in the region was the biggest driver of that fall in market concentration — contributing to growing opportunities for money managers.
While earlier years found subscale insurers content to focus on fixed-income investments, a growing number of more substantial insurers today are responding to the current low-yield environment by diversifying their portfolios and outsourcing more to external managers, he said.