Key Takeaways
- • Swiss Life Asset Managers, managing €300 billion ($350 billion) in assets across Europe, positions real estate and infrastructure as complementary asset classes with distinct but overlapping characteristics, with €150 billion allocated to real estate and €16 billion to infrastructure.
- • Both real estate and infrastructure serve as inflation hedges, protecting institutional investors against elevated consumer price volatility—a critical consideration for portfolio construction in 2026's macroeconomic environment.
- • Britta Roden, Head of Research Real Assets at Swiss Life Asset Managers with 20 years of experience, leads the firm's analytical framework for identifying key distinctions between these asset classes, informing allocation strategies for institutional investors.
- • Swiss Life's 160+ year track record in real assets investing provides institutional context for understanding how long-duration, inflation-protective investments integrate into diversified portfolios.
Summary
Britta Roden, Head of Research Real Assets at Swiss Life Asset Managers in Germany, discussed the convergence and divergence of real estate and infrastructure as asset classes in a recent institutional interview. Roden brings two decades of experience to the role and represents a firm with substantial institutional firepower: Swiss Life Asset Managers manages €300 billion ($350 billion) in assets under management across Europe, with €150 billion deployed in real estate and €16 billion in infrastructure investments. The firm's 160-year history in real assets investing underscores the long-term institutional confidence in these asset categories.
A central theme in Roden's analysis involves the shared inflation-hedging characteristics of both real estate and infrastructure. Both asset classes can protect investors against inflationary pressures during periods of elevated consumer prices, making them strategically valuable for institutional portfolios seeking to preserve real purchasing power. This inflation-protective quality has particular relevance for institutional investors, family offices, and hedge funds managing long-duration capital commitments in an uncertain macroeconomic environment.
While real estate and infrastructure share inflation-hedging properties, Roden emphasized that "there are also some quite distinct" differences between the two asset classes—though the primary source material was truncated before fully elaborating on these distinctions. The interview, conducted for publication on IREI's platform, represents part of Swiss Life's broader effort to articulate its real assets research positioning to the institutional investment community.
A central theme in Roden's analysis involves the shared inflation-hedging characteristics of both real estate and infrastructure. Both asset classes can protect investors against inflationary pressures during periods of elevated consumer prices, making them strategically valuable for institutional portfolios seeking to preserve real purchasing power. This inflation-protective quality has particular relevance for institutional investors, family offices, and hedge funds managing long-duration capital commitments in an uncertain macroeconomic environment.
While real estate and infrastructure share inflation-hedging properties, Roden emphasized that "there are also some quite distinct" differences between the two asset classes—though the primary source material was truncated before fully elaborating on these distinctions. The interview, conducted for publication on IREI's platform, represents part of Swiss Life's broader effort to articulate its real assets research positioning to the institutional investment community.
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