By Tim Prescott, Senior Vice President and Head of Asset Management, NEI Investments

A global investment perspective takes more than looking beyond our borders.

It requires an understanding of different markets, industries, and economic conditions. Plus, the judgment to connect those insights to investors’ needs.

No single firm can be expected to hold all of that expertise within its own walls. Specialized knowledge is developed across regions and investment disciplines, often by teams with deep experience in a particular market or strategy.

For asset managers and advisors, the challenge is identifying that expertise and making it useful to the investors they serve.

I believe partnership is central to meeting that challenge. The right partners bring more than geographic reach. They bring knowledge, perspectives, and capabilities that can broaden the opportunities available to investors. The value lies in how well that expertise is selected, brought together, and made accessible.

Broadening that view starts with understanding what lies beyond the familiar and finding the expertise to navigate it.

Canada is familiar, but familiarity is not diversification

The need for global diversification is not a new idea. Yet many Canadian portfolios remain heavily weighted toward domestic investments. There are understandable reasons for this.

Canadians see our major banks, energy companies, and other prominent domestic brands in their communities and in the news every day. That familiarity builds confidence, which can feel like lower risk.

Home bias is not irrational. But when it becomes excessive, it can create unintended concentration.

While Canada is a cornerstone of many portfolios, it represents only about 3% of the global economy.¹ However, Canadian investors often allocate a much larger share of their portfolios to the domestic market. When investors remain too close to home, they may miss opportunities in industries, regions, and economic cycles that are not well represented in the Canadian market, and they could also experience higher volatility.

The answer is not to abandon Canada or the United States; both will continue to play an important role in many portfolios. The point is that there is a much larger world beyond them.

Advisors can help clients look beyond familiarity by asking whether their portfolios provide meaningful exposure to different markets, sectors, and sources of return, or simply carry a “global” label.

Access matters as much as opportunity

Spotting global opportunities is only half of the work. Investors also need access to specialized expertise, and advisors need that expertise delivered in structures they can readily use.

NEI has long built its investment model around partnerships. In addition to our own highly skilled investment management team, we build partnerships with world-class domestic and global money managers. We search for high-quality global managers with specialized capabilities and make their institutional-calibre expertise available to individual Canadians. In fact, our sub-advisors collectively manage over $10.5 trillion in global assets.²

We do not assume that all the best ideas and talent reside within our own walls. Our role is to identify outstanding expertise wherever it exists, then combine it with a deep understanding of Canadian advisors and investors.

Selecting the right managers is only part of the equation. Their expertise must also be available through formats that align with how advisors build portfolios and how clients prefer to invest.

At NEI, we are becoming more agnostic about structure. We have long maintained our own highly skilled investment management team, including responsible investing expertise, while building partnerships with world-class domestic and global money managers. 

Our upcoming ETF Series line-up is part of that evolution, giving advisors another way to incorporate global investment expertise into client portfolios. The objective is not to favour one format over another, but to make strong investment strategies available through more of the structures advisors want to use.

Partnerships across the value chain

This approach reflects a larger evolution underway at NEI as we become a more comprehensive, full-service asset manager.

We are expanding relationships with leading global investment managers, including Amundi, and through our collaboration with Vanguard. Together, these arrangements help provide advisors with specialized knowledge and perspectives developed across regions, sectors and market cycles.

We are strengthening our capabilities through relationships with Desjardins and RBC Investor Services. Together, these developments expand our partnership model across the value chain and help us deliver useful investment capabilities to more Canadians.

A broader definition of value

An asset manager’s value includes its ability to identify specialized expertise, bring complementary capabilities together, and make them relevant to investors’ needs. Technology, including AI, can support that work. Strong partnerships and informed judgment remain central to it.

For Canadian advisors, broadening the global view therefore means more than looking past familiar markets. It means examining what sits behind an investment solution: where its expertise comes from, whether it truly diversifies, how its managers practice stewardship, and which partnerships make it accessible.

The investment world is becoming more technologically capable, but no less complex. In that environment, the advantage may belong less to the firms with the most impressive tools and more to those with the strongest networks of expertise.

Who you partner with matters. In the next era of investing, it matters more than ever.

^{1 CPP Investments FAQs. Accessed October, 2026.
2 NEI Investment data as of January 2026. Accessed October 6, 2026.}

^{Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with mutual fund investments. Please read the prospectus and/or Fund Facts before investing. Mutual funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated.}

^{NEI Investments is a registered trademark of Northwest & Ethical Investments L.P. (“NEI LP”). Northwest & Ethical Investments Inc. is the general partner of NEI LP and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aviso Wealth Inc. (“Aviso”). Aviso is the sole limited partner of the NEI LP. Aviso Correspondent Partners operates as a separate business unit of Aviso Financial Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Aviso Wealth Inc. ("Aviso"). Aviso is a wholly owned subsidiary of Aviso Wealth LP, which in turn is owned 50% by Desjardins Financial Holding Inc. and 50% by a limited partnership owned by the five provincial Credit Union Centrals and The CUMIS Group Limited. Aviso is a registered mark owned by Aviso Wealth Inc.}