[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, I'm Jed Laskowitz, global head of Asset Management Solutions. As we enter a new decade, multi-asset investors are facing unparalleled return challenges. Balanced portfolios will achieve less than half of the returns of the last decade, driven by low interest rates and stretched valuations, making asset allocation decisions more important than ever before. Simply put, investors need to think about a new portfolio for a new decade.

Our team of dedicated, multi-asset investors have diverse skills and experiences and backgrounds and have the expertise to help you confront this challenge. Now, it all starts with a holistic understanding of our clients' needs. From there, deep research insights combined with the breadth of the J.P. Morgan Asset Management investment platform allow us to access opportunities across any asset class or strategy globally. This results in flexible portfolios that solve for a range of objectives with the ability to quickly adapt to changing market environments.

Now, the trust our clients place in us is paramount, and this confidence is built on the results we've delivered in the past and the strategic investments we are making for the future to better serve our clients. We're developing cutting-edge technology to enhance portfolio management, risk, research, and client reporting capabilities in our proprietary portfolio management system, Spectrum. We're focused on attracting and retaining top talent who bring a diversity of thought and experience to our already globally diverse team.

We're expanding our investment in research capabilities into new markets, including a large strategic investment in China, which will be a key competitive advantage and investment insight in our multi-asset class portfolios. And lastly, we are embedding environmental, social, and governance considerations into all of our solutions to drive better outcomes for our clients and for the planet. Now, our Multi-Asset Solutions team is well-equipped to help our clients confront this return challenge head on, and we're committed to delivering the full resources of J.P. Morgan to help our clients meet their goals.

Hello, my name's John Bilton, and I"m global head of Multi-Asset Strategy. Within Multi-Asset Solutions at the heart of what we do is we think about macro themes and investing in the macro environment around the globe. With such a huge range of global economies and global asset markets to consider, research is essential and critical piece to our investment framework.

Over the last few years, we've made a lot of investment into quantitative, qualitative, and manager research, the three interconnected pillars of our research franchise. Across those three pillars, we all do different things, But ultimately, these are complementary, both to one another and to the wider investment process.

Quantitative research looks at harnessing the signals from a huge data set. It's a dimension reduction exercise in many regards. And what we're looking for is ultimately an historic precedent and an objective read of the data that we're seeing at any given point.

Qualitative research is very judgment based. We look at the future. We think about where policy, macro trends, asset returns, may fall in the future and ultimately how to invest in ultimately those themes and those ideas. And manager research complements both of the other two strands, providing a bottom-up reinforcement of the ideas and the themes in which we're investing.

In addition to the research that we do on a day-to-day basis, we also have a long-term capital market assumptions program. And without being unduly modest here, this is a huge and complementary piece of work that involves both the Multi-Asset Solution research teams and our peers from around J.P. Morgan Asset Management. It's something we've been doing for 25 years. We now cover more than 200 asset classes in 16 different currencies, and we rely upon this piece of work to tell us what we think the fair risks and returns are across all of our asset markets in our opportunity set are likely to be in the years to come.

Ultimately, we believe that there will be some period of lower returns ahead of us, and it's through our research functions that we are able to look at new ways and innovative ways to deliver returns without taking on unacceptable levels of risk in our portfolios. And this is really the guts of what we are looking to deliver across the wide MAS research platform.

Hello, I'm Katherine Santiago, global head of Asset Allocation Research. The role of Quantitative Research team is to prepare portfolio managers to take advantage of market dynamics, help drive better performance, and to understand the risks they're taking in their portfolios. We do this through building time-tested models which utilize innovative ways of looking at data and identifying risks in a portfolio. Our focus is on providing tools for the portfolio managers to better size their positions so if things go the wrong way for one position or view, it won't overshadow the alpha created for all the other positions in the portfolio.

So consider the task of climbing Mount Everest. To be successful, you need a robust team covering several different responsibilities. First, you need highly skilled climbers to lead the team, but you also need a strong team of specialists focused on the details. Certain members help ensure the pack on your back is lean and efficient and your gear is complete. Others have a keen understanding of the challenges posed by the current weather and the terrain based on their time-tested knowledge of past climbs. This team, focused on different but complementary elements working together, is very similar to how our research teams, both quant and qual, work together to help portfolio managers manage risk and achieve better performance.

So how do we actually do this? Our Quantitative Research team is a large group of diverse researchers with backgrounds in AI and machine learning, mathematics, and economics. We build models and tools alongside the portfolio managers. We are not often a silo working on our own. A key to our success lies in our real-time interaction and in-depth understanding of the portfolio management teams. We engage in innovative research that can give us a clearer picture of the markets and economy.

For example, given the vast footprint of JPMorgan Chase, we have the unique ability to look deep into the data of how Americans spend. We can see how shifting employment rates and income changes can drive current and future spending. This provides us with insight into how to take and where future growth might take place. From here, we build tools which allow the portfolio managers to stress test their inputs to better understand what risks they're taking and as they think about which positions to take in the portfolio.

2019 provides a great example of this. We saw signs of a disconnect in correlations of stocks and bonds, which we brought to the attention of our portfolio managers. The managers were then able to extend duration, balance their equity allocation, and capture gains that may have been overlooked. This ended up being one of the bigger contributors to performance for that year.

Hi, I'm Charlie Fishman, portfolio manager on our Global Solutions team. Technology has become integral to day-to-day portfolio management for the Global Asset Management Solutions business. Our proprietary portfolio and risk management system, Spectrum, brings together a variety of research and portfolio management capabilities on a single platform. Having a single user interface allows us to harness the best capabilities of J.P. Morgan to deliver performance and client portfolios and ultimately help them meet their objectives.

In practice, there are four core capabilities our team uses to design and manage client portfolios. The first is research, a central repository for research to inform decision making on asset allocation and strategy selection. The second is analytics, scenario testing, access to our long-term capital market assumptions, and real-time portfolio data allow us to build better portfolios.

The third is risk management. Integration of client guidelines and portfolio risk metrics ensure we're managing client portfolios prudently. The last is portfolio implementation, order sizing and execution to manage existing exposures in portfolios. A single controlled operating environment via Spectrum has created synergies for our entire business and allowed for more seamless portfolio management. Our clients' needs are becoming more complex, and Spectrum allows us to evolve as their goals change.

Hi, I'm Terell Butler from the Solutions Operations Middle Office team. J.P. Morgan Operations manages operational risk on a day-to-day basis in addition to serving as the central point of contact for both the investment teams and broader organization globally. Within Operations, we create economies of scale by transforming the organization through intelligent automation and promoting everyday excellence.

Responsibilities performed by Operations includes four key aspects-- daily reconciliations of positions in cash to our custodians along with start-of-day checks that are performed within Spectrum to validate front office data, which includes market values, transactions, core reference data, and post-trade compliance checks for our portfolio managers.

In addition, we partner with our Risk and Controls team on all audit and regulatory items, as well as review key core operational metrics to identify any potential risks. Lastly, client support-- we partner with our client teams to respond to all client requests that are operational in nature, along with assisting on all account onboarding-related events, as we are fiduciary in everything we do.

At the J.P. Morgan, sound risk management is embedded in our DNA. Our goal is to protect our clients and their portfolios. While ultimate responsibility for investment outcomes rests with portfolio managers, our compliance and risk teams are there to form the second line of defense.

What makes J.P. Morgan's approach to risk management unique? It's my team of dedicated investment directors embedded within our first line of defense. We sit alongside the portfolio managers with a specific focus on risk management and investment oversight.

Imagine us as that driver assist option in your car that helps keeps you in your lane by notifying you as you begin to drift and that alerts you to hazards that could lie ahead. This is the function we serve in your portfolio. We accomplish this by employing a variety of metrics, including ex-ante risk measures and stress scenarios. Our impact was clearly felt during the height of the pandemic where we helped to maintain risk discipline during periods of extreme market volatility. We also had portfolio managers stay in their lane through regular account reviews where we monitor portfolio exposures to ensure they adhere to guidelines, are consistent with the investment goals, and perform in line with client objectives.

Sustainability is core to how we manage portfolios. And across our solutions business, we integrate environmental, social, and governance considerations into all of our investment decisions. This helps mitigate risk but also helps us lean in to some of the innovative and exciting sustainable opportunities that will drive growth through the cycle.

We also focus on developing dedicated, sustainable research, for example, addressing the question of, how would climate change impact investment portfolios? When we think about addressing climate change, we're going to need to see a meaningful reduction in the use of fossil fuels but also an increase in terms of our use of renewable energy sources. And this is going to have a direct and financial impact on companies and our clients' portfolios.

That's why we've developed a robust investment framework that helps us evaluate companies' readiness for this transition to a low-carbon world, looking at their emissions, their management of resources, and their management of risks to help lower emissions, lean in to innovative climate solutions opportunities, and build stronger portfolios for a low-carbon world.

For nearly 50 years, we have worked tirelessly to help our clients meet their goals by creating solutions that access the opportunities and overcome the challenges in an ever-changing investment landscape. Our globally integrated, research-driven approach gives us conviction during times of uncertainty, while the diversity of our talent and capabilities gives us confidence in tackling our clients' most complex problems. Our experienced multi-asset investors will be crucial in addressing the return challenges that lie ahead, and we look forward to being your partner in this new environment. Thank you.