2025 saw markets hit by a period of turbulence similar to that brought by the global pandemic. Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs built on continued concerns over inflation and made the Fed’s job trickier just as it seemed to be nearing a soft landing. With financial advisors transitioning away from acting mostly as portfolio managers for clients and instead leaning into their role as behavioral coaches encouraging clients to stay the course towards their goals, this year likely proved stressful. Asset managers, however, sought to reduce that volatility-related stress.
As financial advisors redefine their roles, so too are asset managers changing the relationship they have with financial advisors. No longer just a resource for funds where clients’ portfolios can be stashed, asset managers are increasingly providing advisors the tools to build their business and understand the news cycle alongside their more traditional role of explaining why the funds they offer really are the best. Asset managers’ thought leadership offers a key avenue to accomplish these goals, and in tracking that thought leadership one can gain an understanding of a firm’s priorities and stature within the industry.
Asset managers are increasingly providing advisors the tools to build their business and understand the news cycle alongside their more traditional role of explaining why the funds they offer really are the best.
Corporate Insight’s Asset Management and Automated Investing team tracked the thought leadership output of 20 firms through the first nine months of 2025, reading through more than 2,000 commentaries and tagging them in a natural language processing software. This tagging, when taken in summation, allowed us to see not just the frequency of publication for various firms, but what topics they emphasized through the year as they sought to build their relationship with financial advisors and position themselves as a trustworthy source for information and, by extension, investment.
Regarding overall publication frequency, firms significantly increased their output in April after Trump announced his tariffs. While some of these commentaries dealt with the investment implications of a changed trade policy, many provided advisors key talking points to pass along to clients as the markets bottomed into correction territory. A common resource asset managers provided was charts illustrating the importance of staying invested during volatility rather than selling into a cash position. Similarly, asset managers published considerable thought leadership on the importance of diversification both in terms of allocation to bonds, but also regarding international equity markets. The tariff-induced market bottom provided asset managers the opportunity to address the excessive equity valuations of domestic markets they had hinted at even before April.
Asset managers also spent considerable time emphasizing and explaining alternative assets as another possible ingredient for advisors to use in portfolio construction. After stocks and bonds, Private Markets found itself as the most discussed commentary within the Portfolio Construction subcategory, indicating a broad emphasis on the investment class within the asset management industry. Similarly, Cryptocurrency earned notable attention, with some asset managers extolling its benefits as a portfolio diversifier while launching ETFs tracking certain tokens.
Cryptocurrency earned notable attention, with some asset managers extolling its benefits as a portfolio diversifier while launching ETFs tracking certain tokens.
Though each firm offered broad commentaries on overall market movements, some firms leaned into niche areas where they could differentiate themselves and their products. AB, for example, published far more thought leadership on Municipal Bonds than any other firm, positioning itself as a go-to resource on the subject for advisors. If advisors associate a firm with extensive expertise on a specific topic, subsequent investment of clients’ funds in that niche becomes far more likely. Similarly, raising such credibility increases the likelihood of investment in actively managed mutual funds and ETFs managed by the firm, which firms spent much of the year promoting as a means of better navigating volatility.
In a competitive field, asset managers are constantly searching for ways to differentiate themselves in the minds of advisors, and thought leadership provides one of the clearest avenues to do so. Subscribers can find the current state of that field and key takeaways from the first nine months within the Asset Management Monitor — Advisor November report.
Tim Drugan
Tim Drugan is an analyst on CI's asset management research team.