Asset Manager of the Year Robbie Cannon on ‘New School’ Investing

Horizon Investments won both the Overall Asset Manager of the Year and Strategist Award thanks to its forward-thinking methods.

“Our approach is centered around the individual,” said Horizon Investments CEO Robbie Cannon. “For so long, the industry has been worried about exposures, style boxes — large cap and small cap, etc.” The solutions created by Horizon, he explains, “actually meet the needs of the clients.”

What’s unique about outcome-based or goals-based investing is, he says, that it differs from “old school” investing: “It’s not IBM you’re not investing in or Microsoft; it’s an outcome,” Cannon stated.

Horizon’s strategy combines these objectives and the corresponding investments. “From a product standpoint, very simply, you have a portfolio, you have some short spend reserve, and you have a risk-mitigation technique on top of the portfolio. What you’re trying to solve for is longevity, inflation, sequence risk and catastrophic risk all within the same packaging,” the CEO explained.

While investments in general are “complicated,” Cannon says, the firm’s approach is meant to be simple for investors. “For example, our distribution solution is called Real Spend — an after-inflation-adjustment spend rate that they can see … 20 and 30 years [out]. It’s something that the client … can get really comfortable with.”