When referring to Katrina Khoupongsy, her firm, Acadian Asset Management used adjectives such as “standout”, “market leader”, and a “role model”.
That is because as someone who has worked for Acadian for seven years both as a portfolio manager and a research analyst, Khoupongsy has excelled in both of these key roles.
As a portfolio manager, Khoupongsy manages a number of the firm’s Australian equity portfolios with assets totalling over $1 billion. Most of these portfolios focus on exploiting the low risk anomaly in the Australian market.
She was responsible for taking the firm’s global process and adapting it to Australian market conditions when the business began running these portfolios.
Acadian chief executive, Andrew Hair, said: “We believe Katrina is a market leader in her understanding of risk within systematically constructed portfolios”.
“Her ability to measure and manage both active and total risk, through traditional risk models and through more specialised tools, is unmatched and makes her one of the central developers of risk-based strategies within Acadian.”
Khoupongsy said many of her clients were after less risk than what was out there in the market but still expected market-like returns.
“With the low risk anomaly the idea behind it is that what we’ve observed is that over a long period of time, investors aren’t being rewarded for risk so what we’re seeing is that high risk stocks actually underperform lower risk stocks,” she said.
She and her team undertook many simulations and tests, with results illustrating that clients would not have to forego returns under the managed volatility strategy, which the fund launched in 2012.
“What the anomaly does is exploit that so in effect because of that underperformance of high risk stocks, it’s possible to create a portfolio of low risk stocks that can achieve market like returns but with much less risk than the market,” Khoupongsy said.
The judges and Hair commended her for being a strong female role model in the quantitative investment industry, which has historically been male dominated.
La Trobe Financial’s Cheree Cain, who was a finalist in this category, was commended for her role in the rollout of an online investment platform that allows investors to open an investment account online and transact from anywhere, with judges commending her for leading by example.
INVESTMENT MANAGER OF THE YEAR
Winner
Katrina Khoupongsy
Portfolio manager and research analyst
Acadian Asset Management (Australia)
Finalist
Cheree Cain
Head of investor operations
La Trobe Financial
