Modern portfolios face growing exposure to monetary, fiscal, and inflationary risks. Bitcoin offers a differentiated potential hedge: a decentralized monetary network that operates without a central counterparty and may serve as a non-sovereign store of value during periods of financial stress. We evaluate how incorporating a target bitcoin allocation may help address rising global debt burdens, banking instability, and monetary risk within a broader portfolio framework. Beyond its role as a potential systemic tail hedge, we will also examine how disciplined, programmatic rebalancing can help investors harness bitcoin’s volatility over time. 

Workshop Objective: This workshop aims to equip investors with a practical framework for assessing bitcoin’s role in portfolio construction, risk management, and systematic rebalancing within traditional multi-asset portfolios.

Company Profile: 21shares is a global leader in cryptocurrency exchange-traded products (ETPs), providing one of the market's most extensive suites of regulated investment vehicles. Founded to bridge the gap between traditional and decentralized finance, the firm pioneered the world’s first physically-backed crypto ETP in 2018. With a seven-year track record, 21shares combines specialized research and proprietary technology to deliver simple, institutional-grade solutions. As an independent subsidiary of FalconX, one of the world's largest digital asset prime brokers, the firm leverages global resources to accelerate its mission of accessibility. Driven by deep capital markets expertise, 21shares delivers the infrastructure necessary for thoughtful, long-term strategic asset allocation. Learn more at www.21shares.com.

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Aleto partners with RIAs to integrate a high-performing, alternatives-based return stream into their clients’ existing portfolios. The Aleto Market Neutral Fund provides a sophisticated, diversified fund-of-funds solution designed specifically for the RIA community, with a strategic focus on alternative-based trading methodologies. The result is institutional-quality hedge fund exposure delivered at a lower cost. By addressing long-standing structural barriers to alternative investment access, Aleto empowers RIAs to strengthen their clients’ portfolios, enhance diversification, and deliver more consistent long-term performance.

Workshop Objective: Demonstrate how the Aleto Market Neutral Fund employs a diversified, market-neutral approach designed to deliver a stable and consistent return profile uncorrelated with broader risk assets.

Company Profile: Aleto bridges the gap between Wall Street innovation and investor accessibility. Founded to empower independent RIAs, Aleto delivers institutional-grade investment products through transparent, fee-based structures designed for fiduciary alignment. Aleto’s Market Neutral Fund combines quantitative rigor with deep manager due diligence to deliver consistent, risk-adjusted performance. By removing structural conflicts, Aleto enables advisors to enhance portfolio diversification, preserve client trust, and strengthen their firm’s economics. Aleto’s mission is to democratize sophisticated investing—bringing the advantages of modern alternative strategies to qualified investors through the advisors they rely on most.

Aptus has a mantra of ‘more stocks, less bonds’. While many traditional allocations lean on bonds for risk management, we believe that in an effort to reduce drawdown, that approach injects significant longevity risk into the portfolio. 
We will discuss the data that drives our beliefs and more realistic hurdle rates for portfolios. 
Using options as a tool to manage risk we’ll talk through why we think good risk management means creating the opportunity to own more risk, rather than taking risk off the table.
This is why we’ve entered the buffered ETF market at an attractive 25 bps expense ratio, opening the door to cost conscious investors, and using the lower cost to generate higher upside caps than peers. 

Workshop Objective: Shift the asset allocation conversation to focus on the structure of a portfolio. Highlighting the importance of performing better in tail environments. Generate higher CAGRs for better terminal values.

Company Profile: Aptus was founded in 2013 to attack the behaviour gap. An investor’s return is more important than an investment’s return, and Aptus delivers solutions designed to minimize behavioural inefficiencies and enhance outcomes.

Practically speaking, Aptus provides options offerings through active and low cost buffered ETFs and in individual account level options overlays.

The third leg of Aptus’ business is Shared CIO services where Aptus provides investment support for large RIAs and OSJs looking to provide multimanager model solutions supported by a team of credentialed PMs. This support ranges from investment committee calls and marketing to trading. 

Aptus has $13.9B in AUM as of 12/31/2025. 

Headlines surrounding private markets are whipsawing investor and advisor psychology. Representing Aksia's $365B institutional private markets consulting business, we will provide perspectives on unpacking these headlines. And we will frame the conversation through the lenses of private credit, private equity, and hedge funds.

Workshop Objective: To equip CIOs with impactful talking points for conversations about private markets with advisors and clients.

Company Profile:  World class partnership between Calamos Investments, a leader in liquid alternatives and Aksia, a leader in private markets. Calamos Investments is renowned for its innovative, risk -managed performance across asset classes with $48.4 billion in assets under management; $22.4 billion in liquid alternatives. Aksia is a private markets consultant and investment manager with global access and extensive experience investing across private equity, private credit, real assets and hedge funds, with $370 billion in total advised and managed client assets, including $137 billion in private credit. Calamos firm data as of 2/28/2026. Aksia firm data as of 6/30/25.

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 In today’s markets, investors are facing policy uncertainty, sticky inflation, and growing questions around traditional asset allocation — the search for portfolio resilience has never been more timely or important. In this session, Brian Blongastainer, Global Investment Strategist at BNY Investments, will share his insights on the role that infrastructure plays in portfolio construction. Institutional investors have long recognized the power of real assets, allocating significant capital to roads, utilities, renewable energy and digital infrastructure, but many advisors and their clients are underweight or have no exposure to the asset class.

Workshop Objectives:
·    Discover the differentiated approach of the BNY Mellon Global Infrastructure Income ETF (BKGI) to infrastructure investing with the strategy's expanded universe that includes traditional and non-traditional assets and focus on companies with defensive business models.
·    Learn about the potential diversification and income benefits of BKGI and why now, with the dawn of the Infrastructure Renaissance, is the time for investors to consider infrastructure exposure.

Company Profile: BNY Investments: Investing as it should be. Expert-driven. Seamless. Built for the future. 
 
At BNY Investments, we manage over $2 trillion in assets for our clients globally, combining the depth and breadth of expertise of our seven investment firms with the global scale and resilience of BNY. Our people work alongside our clients — from individuals and companies to governments and non-profits — to deliver investment solutions across every major asset class to help them achieve their ambitions. We bring this wide range of specializations to clients through our global distribution channels, leveraging the technology and deep operational capabilities of BNY, which oversees $50T in client assets.

Direct and Custom Indexing is the fastest-growing category in wealth management, and Canvas is leading the way.
Join us for an interactive demo of our end-to-end Custom Indexing platform that makes it easy to build personalized, tax-managed portfolios at scale. Built to help your clients save on taxes—and to give you more time, control, and flexibility—Canvas is the next evolution of Direct Indexing. It also includes natural complements for HNW investors, such as Tax Aware Long-Short strategies and Option Overlay solutions.

See firsthand how leading advisors are using Canvas to win new clients, deepen relationships, and drive real growth.

Workshop Objective: You can expect:
1)    To learn the fundamentals of Direct and Custom Indexing
2)    See the Canvas platform and our edge in action 
3) Discuss client profiles and application

Emerging markets delivered one of their strongest years in over a decade in 2025, yet valuations remain compelling relative to developed markets. For those reassessing long-term asset allocation, the conversation often turns to whether EM deserves a structural role in client portfolios. This workshop examines how a dedicated EM allocation has historically enhanced diversification and improved portfolio efficiency over full market cycles. We’ll also explore how accessing the full opportunity set—including underfollowed small- and mid-cap companies with limited sell-side coverage—can potentially uncover differentiated sources of return beyond index-heavy approaches.

Workshop Objective: Examine the long-term role EM can play in diversified portfolios and examine how active, valuation-disciplined management can access opportunities beyond the index.

Company Profile: Dodge & Cox was founded in 1930 in the wake of the Roaring Twenties as a new kind of asset management firm, built on a simple business model and a commitment to pursuing investment excellence. Today, we are one of the world’s largest independently owned investment firms. We actively manage money for individuals and institutions globally with a single, value-oriented investment philosophy applied across a deliberately limited set of offerings. Our focus means we put more resources behind fewer strategies, more passion behind fewer priorities, and more confidence behind every decision. Dodge & Cox was built on a bedrock of independent ownership, integrity, and continuous improvement—so it could serve our clients not just for decades, but for generations.

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A persistent imbalance between US housing supply and demand may be bolstering home prices, even as mortgage rates hover near levels not seen in more than two decades. This, alongside a pullback from banks due to regulatory changes, has created opportunities for private lenders to provide liquidity to the real estate market—and potentially generate attractive, long-term returns for investors. The First Eagle Real Estate Debt Fund (FERLX), invests in a portfolio of private Residential Transitional Loans and Land Banking real estate investments, providing investors with a high barrier to entry strategy in an interval fund wrapper, with REIT taxation. Please join us for a discussion around this unique investment opportunity and learn more about how your clients can benefit from the thematic tailwinds in housing. 

Workshop Objective: 
Join First Eagle Investments at Citywire Private Assets for an alternative credit session focusing on:
•  Private and public investment opportunities in residential real estate markets
•  The potential for elevated income in residential real estate lending 
•  Strategy focuses on strong housing fundamentals and the supply/demand imbalance prevalent in US housing.

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CLOs are diversified portfolios of first-lien, senior-secured corporate loans structured into tranches. The equity tranche absorbs first losses and receives residual cash flow, creating a protective buffer for the rated debt tranches, including BB. This structure has historically helped CLO debt withstand credit cycles. In today’s rapidly growing private credit market, CLOs offer diversified exposure to the same underlying loans many direct lenders originate, making them a compelling way for investors to access private credit with structural protection and professional management. 

Workshop Objective: Understand how CLOs work and how interval funds offer a practical way for investors to access diversified private credit exposure.

Company Profile: Flat Rock Global is a $1.6bn boutique asset manager focused on capacity constrained, income-oriented CLO strategies. Flat Rock funds are available exclusively to RIAs, Family Offices, and Institutions.

We offer three interval fund strategies that provide exposure to all-weather, first-lien, senior-secured loans. 

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In this roundtable, Forge, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Charles Schwab Corporation, will discuss new pathways to help RIAs access private companies. We’ll explore key trends and things to consider when thoughtfully integrating private market opportunities into client portfolios.

Workshop Objective: Learn about unlocking private market opportunities for clients and how to best incorporate exposure into client portfolios. 

Company Profile: Forge, recently acquired by Charles Schwab, is a leading provider of marketplace infrastructure, data services and technology and investment solutions for private market participants. Through its platform, Forge delivers real-time pricing insights, live market signals, and proprietary data to help investors and shareholders better understand private company performance and market activity. With over $17B in transaction volume, 625+ companies traded and 3M+ unique users, Forge brings transparency and access to the private market. Learn more at forgeglobal.com.

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The Oakmark Bond Fund applies a disciplined, intrinsic value approach to fixed income, emphasizing deep fundamental research, management alignment, and investments purchased at meaningful discounts to underlying business value. The experienced fixed income team collaborates with Oakmark’s broad research platform to identify durable companies with strong cash flows, stable earnings, and mispriced credit risk. Portfolio construction is bottom up, focused on the best risk adjusted opportunities, while maintaining flexibility across corporate debt, securitized credit, and government guaranteed securities. The team avoids dependence on macro predictions, instead prioritizing resilient balance sheets and transparent business models. Risk management is embedded throughout the process, enabling the Fund to act opportunistically when market prices disconnect from fundamentals and to remain selective when valuations appear full.

Workshop Objective: Discuss how Oakmark’s disciplined, intrinsic value bond strategy can enhance portfolio resilience, uncover mispriced credit opportunities, and strengthen long term investment outcomes through selective, fundamentals driven fixed income exposure.

Company Profile: At Harris | Oakmark, we are long-term investors. We attempt to identify growing businesses that are managed to benefit their shareholders. We will purchase securities only when priced substantially below our estimate of intrinsic value. After purchase, we patiently wait for the gap between price and intrinsic value to close.

Monroe Capital, a premier lower middle market credit manager, will share key themes and opportunities shaping the private credit space today.   The discussion will focus on three main areas, including lower middle market direct lending to companies with less than $35 million EBITDA, asset backed finance, and real estate debt, offering a comprehensive view of opportunities, dislocations in markets, and challenges across these strategies. We will also examine how Monroe, with over two decades of experience in the lower middle market, finds attractive alpha with a serious focus on downside protection as a principled lender.

Workshop Objective: This session will explore how a premier credit manager drives alpha in all things credit, including direct lending, real estate debt, and asset backed finance. Learn about how the lower middle market compliments the larger fund managers and delivers alpha for investors looking for true diversification in income producing assets.

Company Profile: Monroe Capital is a premier asset management firm specializing in private credit markets across various strategies, including direct lending, technology finance, venture debt, alternative credit solutions, structured credit, real estate and equity. Since 2004, the firm has been successfully providing capital solutions to clients in the U.S. and Canada. Monroe prides itself on being a value-added and user-friendly partner to business owners, management, and both private equity and independent sponsors. Monroe’s platform offers a wide variety of investment products for both institutional and high net worth investors with a focus on generating high quality “alpha” returns irrespective of business or economic cycles. The firm is headquartered in Chicago and has 12 locations throughout the United States, Middle East, Asia and Australia.

As the secondaries market has grown, Churchill’s scaled private capital platform has proven to be an attractive hunting ground for secondaries transactions on the GP-led and LP-led sides of the market alike. As is the case across our platform, Churchill targets high quality secondaries transactions alongside our stable of top-performing U.S. middle market private equity sponsors. Join Churchill’s Matthew Battle, Principal, Investment Strategist, in a discussion that highlights how being a comprehensive capital provider can lead to deep GP relationships and advantageous positioning as Churchill seeks to capitalize on one of the hottest asset classes in all of private markets.

Workshop Objective: 
 Attendees will leave this session understanding how to:
•    Understanding GP-led and LP-led secondaries transactions
•    Leveraging comprehensive capital provider advantages
•    Capitalizing on U.S. middle market private equity opportunities

Company Profile: Nuveen is a global investment leader, managing $1.4T in public and private assets for clients around the world and on behalf of TIAA, our parent company and one of the world’s largest institutional investors.

With broad expertise across income and alternatives, we invest in the growth of businesses, real estate, infrastructure and natural capital, providing clients with the reliability, access and foresight unique to our 125+ year heritage.

Our prevailing perspective on the future drives our ambition to innovate and adapt our business to the changing needs of 
investors — all to pursue lasting performance for our clients, our communities and our global economy.

Nuveen. Invest like the future is watching.

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The session covers infrastructure fundamentals and how investing in the buildout of tomorrow’s essential assets can deliver equity-like returns while enhancing portfolio diversification. It also explores how a balanced core-plus/value-add mid-market strategy can help investors capture opportunities linked to the estimated $95 trillion in global capital required to meet structural demand for next-generation infrastructure assets.

Workshop Objective: Explore how private infrastructure can enhance portfolio construction through diversified strategies, differentiated return drivers, and disciplined investment processes, including real-world case studies that illustrate opportunity, execution, and long-term value creation.

Company Profile: Partners Group is one of the largest firms in the global private markets industry, with around 2,000 professionals and over USD 185 billion in assets under management, inclusive of all Partners Group affiliates. The firm has investment programs and custom mandates spanning private equity, private credit, infrastructure, real estate, and royalties. With its heritage in Switzerland and its primary presence in the Americas in Colorado, Partners Group is built differently from the rest of the industry. The firm leverages its differentiated culture and its operationally oriented approach to identify attractive investment themes and to build businesses and assets into market leaders.

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This presentation explores Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS) as a distinctive asset class offering attractive diversification and potential risk-adjusted returns that are uncorrelated to traditional financial markets.  Pioneer Investments offers two differentiated funds that can be deployed individually or in some combination based on investor requirements. 
 
Victory Pioneer CAT Bond Fund is a differentiated offering from Pioneer ILS Interval Fund from many important perspectives, including: risk and return expectation, peril and geographic risk allocations, liquidity and benchmarks.  Victory Pioneer CAT Bond Fund offers daily liquidity through an open-end mutual fund structure, investing primarily in catastrophe bonds with a 3 year return: 13.36%.  The Pioneer ILS Interval Fund provides broader diversification across multiple ILS formats (quota shares, collateralized reinsurance, catastrophe bonds, and ILWs).
 
Historical data demonstrates that SwissRe Global Cat Bond Index has delivered positive returns in 23 of the past 24 years, with low correlation to equities, bonds, and commodities. The asset class benefits from elevated reinsurance pricing levels, creating favorable conditions for investors. Pioneer's dedicated ILS team leverages over 18 years of experience managing these specialized securities.

Workshop Objective:
•    Understand ILS fundamentals and how these instruments offer different risk/reward exposure
•    Explore the portfolio diversification benefits from adding uncorrelated ILS exposure to traditional fixed income and alternative allocations
•    Lean about Pioneer Investment’s 18+ years of dedicated investment experience and risk management across multiple ILS formats

Sit down with WCM Investment Management’s portfolio managers, Andrew Wiechert and Drew French, for a discussion on WCM’s unique approach to international equities. As long-term investors, WCM’s goal is to find quality businesses with growing competitive advantages (“economic moats”) aligned with strong, adaptable corporate cultures. WCM requires each portfolio company to possess a durable and, more importantly, improving economic moat. Economic moats are always changing, and business fundamentals (e.g., ROIC) are intimately tied to the trajectory of a company’s competitive advantage. WCM believes understanding these competitive advantage dynamics, as well as how a company’s corporate culture supports its competitive advantage, is essential to finding durable, compounding businesses that defy the “Street’s” long-term expectations.

Workshop Objectives: Learn how the WCM Focused International Equity strategy utilizes WCM’s approach, focusing on investing in businesses with growing competitive advantages aligned with strong and adaptable corporate cultures. 

Company Profile: WCM Investment Management is a ~$100 billion investment boutique headquartered in Laguna Beach, CA, which provides innovative equity investment advisory services to institutional investors across the globe. WCM’s primary goal is to generate long-term, sustainable excess returns for clients through actively managed strategies that generate alpha by exploiting inefficiencies in global equity markets. WCM strives to mitigate risk for its clients by constructing high-quality, holistically balanced portfolios that target downside protection. The firm is majority owned and controlled by employees, prioritizing broad-based employee ownership.