At the Summit With Allspring

Kate Burke: In a landscape defined by rapid change, complex risks, and evolving client needs, investors are looking for clarity and consistency from their partners. At Allspring, our focus remains steady: Continue to be a preeminent leader in delivering investment excellence across asset classes, regions, and vehicles—like we've been doing for almost 100 years. In combination with our commitment to client partnership and platform excellence, this is a foundation that allows us to continually raise the bar on the client experience and the outcomes we deliver. That's why we've spent the last week here at our National Sales Summit affirming our commitment to that excellence by bringing our teams together to share perspectives, sharpen our thinking, and plan for how we'll show up for clients in today's ever-changing landscape. Here are some of the highlights.

Ann Miletti: When you look at unintended risks and you are out talking to your clients and listening to your clients about the challenges they may have, I think you can see the opportunity we have to help.

Jon Baranko: We are much better than we give ourselves credit for. I think we are our biggest critics because we look at the industry and we look at the challenges and what's going on. But I think you should recognize that people are watching us. People are paying attention. People are fascinated about what's going on at Allspring, and we can compete with the best of the best.

John Moninger: As we're pivoting to charting our own course and charting our own path, make sure that we are taking our client input and not just giving them exactly what they're asking for, which we should consider—that's a good idea sometimes—but it's also what are they not asking for but they should be?

Holly Swan: A big hot button issue is the wealth tax and will the wealth tax happen in California? What would the impact of the wealth tax be? Will we see other states enact the wealth tax?

Nick Venditti: The risk is de minimus, but a retail market, retail investors, they run from those headlines. When they're running away, we should run to.

Bryant VanCronkhite: If you go into the next downturn thinking the old playbook works to protect you by buying utilities, by buying REITs (real estate investment trusts), you might be very, very disappointed with how your portfolio defends. And, so, we're thinking about that on the value side.

Allegra Heyligers: I think as we think about the data platform of the future and Client 360, that will unlock a lot of opportunity for us to leverage AI (artificial intelligence) more—whether that's in Salesforce or in other vendor tools—as we get the data to a better place.

Maulik Bhansali: The level of volatility that we're seeing now is still quite a bit higher than what we saw when rates were zero, for example. So, I think keeping that context is important. And it's still reasonably high—high enough that an active manager can exploit that level of volatility.

Kate Burke: The outcome of what I'm talking about today is about our strategic pillar in the pursuit of client partnership excellence. This is our strategy. It is a differentiated client experience. The secret to all of this is focus and execution.