podcast sound policy why fm chief investment officer calls 2026 anti fragile

Brian Amaral 

Welcome to Sound Policy. I'm your host, Brian Amaral. Normally on this show, we talk to FM’s loss prevention engineers, researchers, scientists, all to explore risk and resilience. Today we'll be talking about a different sort of risk and resilience: financial risk and resilience. I'm pleased to have on the show Sanjay Chawla, who is the chief investment officer here at FM. Sanjay is going to break down 2026 in the financial markets, where we've been and where we're going. Sanjay, thanks for being on the show. 

Sanjay Chawla 
Thanks for having me, Brian. 

Brian Amaral 
Can you talk a little bit about the work you do at FM? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Sure, Brian. So, I, in my role as chief investment officer and part of the executive committee, my goal is to make sure me and the investments team do the best we can to really kind of build the portfolio in a very optimal manner. What I guide the team to is from an enterprise wide focus is, let's do the best we can to strengthen the balance sheet as much as we can; i.e., seize the opportunities from the investment ecosystem so that our insurance colleagues can very much go out and serve our clients in the best possible manner. We're super patient capital in that regard. Our goal has been very much to kind of set this as an all-weather portfolio. So, as we know, we started, I joined here eight years ago; we were $17 billion at that time. And we've since then grown that to just, just over 39 billion now. I say that if we can build our balance sheet to be as strong as we built out to be and continue to kind of stay on that path, our insurance colleagues can really drive what's best for our clients. And really coming up in—our expertise on the insurance side is on the engineering side, right—very much what we can do on resilience, come up with new solutions. And from an innovation standpoint, initially it was just to grow, let's say, grow the surplus and manage the downside when markets behave differently. Now, given the opportunities that, that we see across the board, not just in the public space, but also in the private market space, innovation in the venture side, it's absolutely phenomenal. 

Brian Amaral 
Does that make it a challenge? To talk about insurance, there's a soft market and a hard market. That might not align with a bull market and a bear market. Those might not all happen at the same time. How does that make a challenge? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Yeah. Correct. Absolutely. And I think our goal is to very much run that through the, the investment cycle, right? If we can do the best we can, you know, take out the most we can, in the market opportunity set and also kind of manage the downside when we see that downside coming, we'll do super well in the, in the combined manner for the company on the insurance side. That, that as we've seen that across different cycles and the, you know, kind of the soft market and the hard market on the insurance side. I think, if anything, you know, we look to kind of leverage on expertise we’ve built on the investment intelligence side, the macroeconomic front. What that translates into different pieces as well on what the GDP is like, what different countries are like, the opportunity sets in different countries around the globe, and then also the inflationary aspects as well, right. When you see that, you know, how much of that seeps into what we see on the insurance side as well. 

Brian Amaral 
You said all-weather. Let's talk about the weather in 2026. If you had to describe the market in 2026, in one word, what would it be? 

Sanjay Chawla 
No different than what we see on the insurance side. Resilient, right. Super resilient on that front. Very opportunistic as well. And I think the one that I like a lot is, you know, antifragile. 

Brian Amaral 
Antifragile. 

Sanjay Chawla 
Yeah, I think that's one thing which continues to kind of build on disruption that comes through and, and continued growth on that front.  

Brian Amaral 
Has there been something that surprised you? Are you surprised that it's been antifragile, that it's been so resilient, especially against the backdrop of a lot of conflict? A lot of, a lot of change in the world right now. 

Sanjay Chawla 
I think you nailed it on that one, I think, to me, I think that is that has been the biggest surprise for me. From a global perspective, and it's obviously a different world order now, you know—there are other players that have emerged around the globe in addition to U.S., and when you think about, you know, what's happening in the Middle East as well, you know. I think our first instinct was very much what happened in ‘22 when the Russia-Ukraine war happened, and you would have expected inflation. Inflation is a huge factor right now. So, if you start to see rates go up when actually there's, you know, more of that expectation: the rates do go up, markets go down. But the opportunity set, the what we call kind of the top, top line is so strong that it's been able to weather that risk of inflation, as well as the commodity prices in general, oil in particular. I think it's still ongoing in that respect. So, I do think that was one that completely surprised a lot of us, just on the fact that it's, it's really how things have been so resilient, and that's why the whole resilience piece comes out. And what we see on what's happening on the AI cycle—and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that as well—has just driven that complete navigation through the, the volatility that we've seen out of the Middle East. 

Brian Amaral 
Yeah. Let's get into that. AI. How do you see what the effect that it's having on the market. And one of the questions that inevitably comes up is, is this a bubble? How do you address those opportunities and potential concerns? 

Sanjay Chawla 
I mean it's, it's reasonable to kind of think, is this a bubble? But the reality is it's not a bubble. You know, I will tell you, in all my years of investing, this is the busiest I've been in my job, you know. And, and coming up from the ranks as an analyst, when you do a lot of work, you know, running spreadsheets and all that, and now, given the what's keeping me busy and the team busy is the making sure we don't miss out on any opportunities. There’s opportunities across the board. There's opportunities across public markets, you know. They're very much—the, the Mag 7 was a big piece on that front. And what we're seeing on the innovation side come through on the technology front, on AI—and I can touch more on that. How do we think about AI as well. And you know, you take that, you know, public markets, private markets. In the private markets, it's private equity. It's a venture. It's real assets. It's digital and infrastructure. It's private credit that's lending on to that as well, right. So, that whole pipeline is so strong; it's unbelievable. 

Brian Amaral 
You said the biggest opportunity you've seen in investment. You've been in this for a while, right?  

Sanjay Chawla 
Yeah, absolutely. 

 Brian Amaral 
This is, this has been, you've been through some, you've been through an actual bubble, which was the dot com bubble. This is not like that. There are some differences? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Yeah, I mean, you know, go back to even the 1987 crash as well, right. You go back to then, and what we saw in the in the dot com bubble and, and then the GFC. The GFC was the one. And I think that, to me, if, if you think about is, is we've kind of navigated through anything and everything that's been, you know, thrown at us from a market standpoint or even the environment standpoint. You know, this is one where you see cash flows. I mean, I think what you were missing in, in the ‘99, 2000 timeframe was cash flows. The earnings are so strong for all these companies that are actually running up with now up to trillions of dollars in market cap that that’s actually very, very true and realistic, right? And there’s real flow as well. And I think someone pretty aptly mentioned, you know, we talk about FOMO or, or it's an arms race, um, and, but it's the, you know, rightly said. Nash equilibrium was one term that that comes up as well. It's really the fear of missing it if in the event you're not putting the right level of CapEx into these investments, yeah.  

Brian Amaral 
Yeah. Let's talk about AI and, and also data centers. What do institutional investors look for when they're deciding whether or not to invest in a data center project? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Yeah, it's really been phenomenal how this whole piece has evolved so quickly. When have, mega funding needs as well that come up, you know, your immediate thought is, you know, companies will come in and do a public issuance, a bond, bond issuance that will come out and the scale will be significant. And we've seen some of that. But I think the one thing that is different; there's more activity happening in the private lending space. You really need to have that linkage as to what all is needed. You need to have the tenants. You know, hyperscalers are a big part of, of you know, who, who kind of is very much, you know, resting in these data centers as well. And, and to have the right tenants with the right, you know, kind of the credit ratings, you know, the ability to pay back, you need contractual agreements. So, two sides of it is one is the equity as well as the other part is the, the debt side of it. And the debt part is one where you actually will see that as well, because you need contractual flows to come in to validate that as well, right. So, this is what you need. You know, it's great to kind of look at how, you know, how the multiples can grow, and that's very much the case. But the equity piece sometimes will come into being to the smaller, you know—if you have a mega deal that's being done in the private space, the private equity piece is smaller; whereas it's really more on the lending side that will come through as well. Having said that, there's, there's funding being done from both sides of it as well. A good part of that is also insurability. You know, are the data centers insurable or not, right? The assets. At the end of the day, you know, when we talk about loan to value LTV, right, and the key part is, is the value going to sustain or not as well? So, the credibility of the diligence is absolutely important as well. And given the fact that it's so competitive from all the providers as well, it ends up becoming the providers want to keep that information, not super public. So that's why the private lending facilities come in as well. We've seen that with some of the big hyperscalers. So, we've had these $30 billion deals done where, you know, a good, good part of the majority of that is through the lending side. And that could have been a bond issuance but comes out through even just private structures or private placements. There's a piece on the equity side. 

Brian Amaral 
Another one of the big themes this year on the more negative side is turbulence in private credit. Do you think this is going to continue into the next half of the year, and how do you see this private credit issue? 

Sanjay Chawla 
If anything, it goes back to selection: the quality of the deals. When you look at the entire spectrum of, of investing and capital raising, things have moved a long, long way from just public markets into private markets. We have more private portfolio companies today than used to be. Some large private companies that are out there as well, right. So, when you think about it, is the private credit side is no different on that front. We'll invest in private credit, but top-notch private credit. There are some—as long as you're getting compensated for even a notch below, then you would have that as well. In some ways, when you think about public versus private—and it's kind of almost a myth that public would be great on that—the only thing that public markets will do for you, that you can get out. At what price, you don't know that. And how much of that would you recover, you know? The high yield bonds, bond market is a good reference to share that. What's, what's a default rate? What's a recovery rate? I think those things come into that part. The good thing is, in public markets, in that space, that you can actually get out of stress, and that's all you want to do. So, if the governance of an asset owner defines that you need, we need to get out of this right now, and then, you know, the CIO can actually then make the call to go and get out of it. But in this case, if you have the staying power, the super patient capital and we are super patient capital. As long as we make sure that our diligence is done right up front, we're in a good spot on that front. But it is—it takes a long time to underwrite these, these transactions as well. Sometimes they're at the bottom up, as we call the deal level. At other times, it's actually at the mandate level as well, right, so. 

Brian Amaral 
I understand you're a, a basketball fan. You played basketball as a kid growing up in India. So, we are now, let's say, just coming out of half-time, entering the second quarter, here in July. We’ve got a big lead. We’ve put some points on the board. What are the big risks, if you put it in basketball terms, to maintaining this lead through the rest of the year? 

Sanjay Chawla 
I mean, I think I'd approach that a little bit differently in versus a basketball game, as you just brought that up. If I was playing that game at that point in time, and I would kind of tell the team, let's do more of the same on that front. In fact, if anything, do that, but do that, let's do that more defensively. You know, we've got to maintain that lead and keep that going. At the end of the day, we've got to win, even if it's by two points or ten points. You got to win, right. So, um, here it's actually open-ended. We don't know whether it's only the half-time left or not. We absolutely think this could go for a long period of time. The engine is just getting started on a bigger scale. We had this whole focus on LLMs first, right? You know, very much thinking about what's happening with OpenAI and, and, and  Anthropic. And I think now then the question is what happens with these models? What happens in the applications? We're now starting to see more opportunities shown to us on the, as co-investments in the application space. So, I think that's the differentiation. It's very bottom up. If anything, we're actually trying to make that lead. If we had a ten-point lead, we're trying to make that as a 40-point lead, right, so. 

Brian Amaral 
Not so much a zero-sum game. You just win by two points, and, and it's the same at the end of the day. 

Sanjay Chawla 
Exactly. As we think about different styles of working, we're pretty much as close as it can be as 24/7. We're a group of 40 people. And, and it's just, you know—if you can see the opportunity set, what it's like; it just doesn't stop. It's hard to kind of say, okay, I can take the weekend off, right, so. 

Brian Amaral 
How do you think AI is going to transform the economy? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Yeah, I know that's a great question. What's being talked about right now is like the K-shaped economy as well, right? I think folks who are doing really well, people who put the capital to work, are doing really well. So, the individuals who are actually on the lower income side, the middle-income side, you know, are kind of continuing to kind of do the same on that front, right?  Or there's risk around the jobs part of it as well. I think that's something more that remains to be seen. I think there's anything that you have any revolutionary technology disruption that comes in, there always will be that adjustment that will happen. At the end of the day, I think it's easy to say we don't need any more analysts on that front, but that's, I, in my mind, that's not the case because if you're building the team for the long term, you've got to build the pipeline. You've got to build the folks you who will kind of take us forward. I think that's the piece around that analyst. It's just the bar becomes very high, you know. It really is now the fact. How is everybody approaching this? You know, is it more of an offense or defense? And I think we really need to have people on the offense on that front. Because it's easy to say, okay, yeah, we're going to have efficiencies come in. Productivity is a big part of it. But the biggest delta, Brian, for me as I think through this, is going to be value generation. How do we scale values around that as well? How do we scale the opportunities at the revenue generation that will come out from that? I think that's where the big opportunity is. And I think initially it's easy to kind of focus on, you know, how do you do that? I can run this report very easily. It saves me time. But I think I don't want to lose, you know, myself or the team or my colleagues, to kind of keep that vision on what can we do more for FM? What can we do more for FM investments, yeah? 

Brian Amaral 
If everybody can use AI to make good investment decisions, how do you make sure you’ve still got alpha? You’ve got to get good people in there. 

Sanjay Chawla 
Sure. Absolutely. 

Brian Amaral 
Is that part of what you’re thinking about? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Well, also the key part as well is one thing you cannot delegate to AI is accountability. 

Brian Amaral 
Mm. 

Sanjay Chawla 
I think no matter how much you can do, you still got to keep that to you. Because at the end of the day you can't say, hey, the AI model gave me a wrong answer, right, so? 

Brian Amaral 
Yeah, that might be the better basketball metaphor than I tried with, with my four quarters. But, but just building a team and being the, being accountable at the end of the day, as a, as the sort of coach of the, of the team. What do you think a big risk is that may be, maybe being underrated through the rest of the year and beyond of 2026? 

Sanjay Chawla 
I think the risk is very much that, you know, folks going on defense, on that side. Let’s say if we're on kind of step level two of ten steps out there, and people are thinking, we've really got, you know, we're kind of—this is now when you talk about the question of risk of a bubble, you're almost thinking, we're like at 7 or 8, right? I think if you kind of take that—when you have so much happen, there obviously will be some adjustments that will happen. You've really got to focus on what are, what are, what are the big positives out of this as well. And if you can navigate through that part of the noise—what can go wrong—we're obviously, you know, we spend a lot of time just that risk management mindset and just to making sure that nothing goes wrong. And I think that is the key part to me is like, you know, not being on the, on the defense. Stay on the offense here. And defense is part of our, our kind of DNA in the first place.  

Brian Amaral 
All-weather.  

Sanjay Chawla 
Yeah, exactly. All-weather. Exactly. Nailed it. Yeah. 

Brian Amaral 
This might be actually a very similar answer, but what do you think one big opportunity is? Is it, is it, is the big opportunity just staying on offense? 

Sanjay Chawla 
You know, the deeper dives we're doing across the ecosystem, you know—because when you think about it, as you know, like I said, the large language models were the first thing to do as well. And then after that, it's the application. Like, where can we actually generate that? Where productivity efficiencies will come through on that front? But also what is somebody else working on? And the way, Brian, we kind of think through that as well—we didn't used to have this before. But you know, something as we built a team out and the right folks, the connection into the whole venture system that we've been able to build is absolutely top-notch. And, and it doesn't mean that everything that VC shops are going to do will succeed. And that's never the genesis of it, when you invest with that. It's like you have such a great exposure to what's out there. What's working, what's succeeding, what's not, not succeeding. And I think that is the key part to understand that and, like, really learn along the way. It takes us a long way. 

Brian Amaral 
Let's talk about, as you said, all-weather, some of the stormy, choppy weather that we've had. Inflation is still pretty stubborn this year. How do you see that continuing into the second half of this year? And how do you think that's going to shape the market? 

Sanjay Chawla 
I think the, the inflation piece; there's two kinds of that. The asset inflation is driving a good chunk of it. So, the other part is the consumer level. And so that's why I go back to that K-shaped recovery that we're seeing. People who can spend are continuing to spend, and even, you know, big ticket, bigger ticket amounts. But I think the lower income folks—I mean, imagine, if I think when we, when we were coming out of college and all that, looking for, you know, as a young, young couple; we were able to early on buy a house, you know. When you think about the millennials, the Gen Zs, they cannot afford to do that, to even pay the rent that's out there as well, right? I think that part is suffering. Obviously, we talk about the, the generational wealth transfer component that's going on as we speak, and I think that's what's helping the whole ecosystem today as well. But then that also then shows that separation, the divide within the haves and the have-nots. I think that's something over time, I do think needs to be managed, to brought the have-nots along to a better spot as well. Yeah. 

Brian Amaral 
With higher inflation we might also have higher interest rates, maybe higher for longer. They might not go up this year, but they're going to maybe stay higher than people had assumed. Is that posing a challenge at all as you're approaching investment decisions? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Yeah, I think, you know, there is certainly that component. You know, the Fed's charge is very much to, you know, is the inflation piece as well as the employment piece as well. And the employment risk is there. Yeah, as of now it's been holding up well. But that piece around loss of jobs could be certainly a factor as well. I mean, certainly some of the large tech companies, the mega ones, have announced layoffs. I think that part is very much a true risk. And how broad that ends up being, that's something that remains to be seen. The saving grace is about—certain jobs, you've got to have the physical presence to do it.  

Brian Amaral 
Yeah.  

Sanjay Chawla 
You know, and I think that's something which is out there. We, we talk about, you know, the physical AI as well and the robotics aspect to it. There is still a lot of testing that needs to happen. It's certainly further along for sure, right? It's for real today as well. We see that in some of the mega companies as well; that's happening today. And the risk of physical AI is something which, which is also front and center. We have AI as a tool, but the other part is the intelligence at the human level is absolutely just—that is the other positive advantage that will come out of this. All of us will pick this up. And that's why I say raising the bar for the talent pool today, whether it's junior or senior folks. You know, you got to be—have the ability to scale. 

Brian Amaral 
You mean it'll help people be better at their jobs?  

Sanjay Chawla 
Absolutely. Absolutely.  

Brian Amaral 
You think it will help them level up. 

Sanjay Chawla 
We won't be able to rely on models entirety. What do you scale out of the models? How do you learn from those models? How do you kind of say, okay, you know, can we build this application that will help us do this better? You know, simply one from a cost standpoint, but then also, what else can I do, right? The frontiers that are kind of open ended right now. 

Brian Amaral 
Do you use it a lot? Is it a big part of your daily workflow? 

Sanjay Chawla 
I do. And I also actually we started, well, we encouraged the team to do it. And you can have, you know—in that process we'll see who's an expert at it and that we call our super users within the team. And we very much try and make sure every leadership team meeting that I have, we kind of have people come in and talk through how they're using it. You know, the kickoff meeting, when we had—the start of the year, we had an analyst, and actually folks from all levels, come in and share how they're using it as well. Certain jobs are using it more than others. And, fortunately, the ones that we have are the ones where the value addition is a big part of it. You know, our equity analyst team very much extensively uses that. And for us, you know, I, I learn a lot from that, you know, how that ecosystem comes through, you know. And I think the key part is to think about, there is a one piece that is happening in the market: Buy on dips; buy on dips, right. And that's what's kept it up. Is this too much of that going on? You know, we're just coming in and buying on dips, right? So, I do have this tiny bit of fear in the, in, in my mind as to the risk element to it. Not a lot of folks have seen what happens in a crisis.  

Brian Amaral 
Right.  

Sanjay Chawla 
You know, when you go back to even GFC; you know that that was a long time ago. 

Brian Amaral 
That's a big dip to buy. 

Sanjay Chawla 
Exactly. Right. You know, when you think about it, like, that's 18, 19 years ago. And like, you know, are people out there. So, you've got to have, maybe seen that in some form or another. Were you in school, undergraduate or, or, or grad school at that point in time? It's a different lens when you've actually managed a portfolio at that point in time, so. 

Brian Amaral 
What was that like? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Stay calm is what you need on that front. Because I think the worst thing you can do when markets are dipping significantly that you start selling.  

Brian Amaral 
Yeah.  

Sanjay Chawla 
As I say that, that's the whole concept around the all-weather. Let's prepare for what can happen. But if it doesn't happen, we're still benefiting from the upside as well. So, you want to have it ready to, to take that on. You know, put the positions on before you expect the crisis to happen. And if, you know, sometimes it's not that we have a crystal ball, but as you see those analytics kind of, you know, run through, then you kind of add on to your positions, and you manage that through as well. But at the end of the day, you can't forget, it's not just about making money. It's about making sure we deliver on a strategic objective across the board. Yeah. 

Brian Amaral 
Which is a form of financial protection, right? I mean, FM works on the property loss prevention, helping to protect property loss, but this is about helping to protect from… 

Sanjay Chawla 
Exactly. I think, I’ll go back to that, you know, if you have a strong balance sheet, we can do really well for our clients. 

Brian Amaral 
On a similar theme to the markets, 2026 has been a year of blockbuster IPOs. Maybe more to come. You are the chief investment officer of a mutual insurance company, which has an all-weather portfolio, maybe a different approach from the go, go of some of these market moments. How do you think about those blockbuster IPOs? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think the, I think our goal from that standpoint is to kind of, you know, very much harness what I, what we call outperformance in every bucket, whether it's public markets or private markets. And IPOs are one for sure. Two other words that I would use for our current times is scale and intelligence. And IPOs, when you think about, you know, the scale of the size of these IPOs is significant, right? You know, ones that we haven't seen, you know—as we talk about millions have become billions and billions have become trillions—and, and that's something which is very much unique factor that we're seeing in this cycle. I think it's, at the end of the day, you've got to be very much bought into the underlying, as you call the bottom-up diligence part of it, not just approach things on a top-down basis. Everybody's buying it; let's buy it as well. We don't do that, right. It's like, make sure there's underlying bottom-up cash flow analysis. And it's easier to do that in certain cases when you do have, you know, like, a contractual component as well, right. So, when you talk about the data center side of it, there's lending agreements there; you can see the cash flows, the rents coming in and all that, and that will get you to the coupon and then the principal redemption. But on the equity side, it gets to be, you know; it's a different piece of the, you know, the investment ecosystem, and it's a different part of the portfolio. And it would we actually, you know, invest in these IPOs. We would look to definitely participate in it, right. We would look for that as to when do we get in. You want to get into these, you know, companies very early on, so. 

Brian Amaral 
Even pre-IPO? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Pre IPO, for sure. That is very much the way to do it for us, um, because then you get more well-informed about these companies as they evolve. I think that's how we're thinking about it. Because once they make it into an index—an index is part of our, you know, relative performance assessment—then the team, you know, some members of the team will be very much compelled to kind of say, okay, if you're not having anything on in the book, then that means you're taking an active position on that one. So, so, I think just understanding the ecosystem—and, you know, we're talking about some top companies in this space. And so, getting to participate in them super early on—as long as we, we have access to it—then that's been very powerful. And that's, you know, it's, it's more recent for us in that respect, because, you know, we were very limited in the private market space. We're now more active in the private market space. It's still pretty small from a broader ecosystem, but at least we're not zero. That was the case—or about 1% before—when I got here. 

Brian Amaral 
Mhm. That's a good transition actually to talk about how FM approaches investing differently. How would you say you might approach investing differently as the chief investment officer? And, and , and the company structure, how does that influence how it, how it approaches? 

Sanjay Chawla 
No, it's absolutely phenomenal. I think we're—I want to say it gives us such an advantage, and it's so powerful for us, what we can do. And, and I think it goes back to the part of realizing what it is, right? I mean, I think, you know, you could have teams that are just kind of stock picking or, or bond picking and you do that. But the whole value that we're generating out of the entire investments ecosystem is very powerful for FM. That's what I really kind of, you know, set out to do. And we’ve really achieved, fortunately, you know, realized a good part of that vision that I'd first come out to build this out. And because you think about it as, you know, that the steady, you know, as you go piece has been very powerful as well, right? Because the public equity markets, the Mag 7s have done super well, and as we continue to track that, we'll get that as well. We built on the international equity space as well, which has been a huge diversifier, right, this year and last year, international equities have done better than U.S. equity return, despite the fact that U.S. has done phenomenal, right. So, I think those are pieces of diversifying that side of it. And you know, for me, you know, the management, you know, everybody has been very supportive as we set out on the, on the path, you know, eight years ago. And it's actually been just top-notch. And I think it's one of the pieces that I call it—we're almost on the investment side; we're a startup in a 190-year-old company. And that's, you know, really kind of brings the ownership when I first took the job. I go back to the accountability level. You know, no matter what, we built a great team. But I still hold, you know, myself as most accountable on that front, right. So, I think, you know, staying plugged in into that is very good. And then having, having the team built out with strong discipline and with that same intelligence. And, you know, a lot of the things as we hire junior talent and mid-level talent, they'll come with a lot of new things. And as a collaborative approach, we can actually continue to build that. And that's something that we've tried to do. The biggest advantage for us is, you know, we're—as they call it—we're super patient capital. We don't have to do anything for the short term. And we will need it for liquidity purposes, and we create a pool for that. And we're always managing that very closely; on a daily basis, actually. But we'll track what I call as the top-down piece as well as the bottom-up piece. The bottom-up gives us the intelligence at the company level, the deal level, the top-down gives us an intelligence at the broader investments ecosystem. It'll give us a sense on, you know, is it better to invest in Asia this year or not? Or is it better to invest in tech? Is, should we do a tech overweight or not? So, the top-down piece gives us that lens. We'll look to add value from both angles, in a selection as well as what we call allocation. And as you do that, it doesn’t—it's intended to work at all times, but as we know, when I call all-weather, sometimes it will not, right? Because it's in a, in a, at a time like Mag 7, right, when you have seven stocks driving a good part of the index, it's hard for active management, for, you know, like a 100, 100 stock owned portfolio to kind of add alpha on top of that. That's where the diversification piece comes in, the sizing comes in. And I think that long-term patience has absolutely been good. I think we still, what we think about when I say long-term patience, it's very much resilience, right? It's not complacency. Because we like I said, we monitor the book every day. But if you keep that long-term focus in mind. It's very powerful, right? Because we don't have to redeem for certain things, right. I mean, I think our business model is phenomenal. We've kind of seen that as well, you know, through, through kind of a hard market or soft market, we've done, knock on wood, super well. And as we've done that, both engines are completely fired up on that front, so. 

Brian Amaral 
Do you think FM invests differently from even other insurance companies, for example, life insurance companies that have much longer-dated policies? 

Sanjay Chawla 
I think that's, that's super on point. We're commercial property insurers. Our kind of policies are renewed much more quickly, you know. You know, on the life side, you know, it's a very defined long term, you know, what the mortality rates are as well. And so, and so, but it also kind of creates them to be having very much, you know, core fixed-income, long duration type of products in the life companies. For us, we're able to kind of generate a broader, you know, portfolio construction around it as well, that we can take advantage of the equity side, you know, the fixed income piece, as well as now more recently on the private market side. In general, you know, I think I see some news out there where people, you know, there's media around, you know, insurers that are piling into private markets. And that's too generic a statement for people to make; because it's not the insurance teams. I mean, obviously, you know, I can talk about our team, but even as I see in our peers, you know, they're super, as smart as they get. So, it's not somebody just going in on that front. So, I think it's, it's a difference on that side that comes in more on the retail side versus the institutional side. So, the institutional level, the diligence level is top-notch. 

Brian Amaral 
We started this by asking you to describe 2026 so far, in one word. If you had to predict, if you had a crystal ball, what do you think the second half of 2026 will look like? 

Sanjay Chawla 
Let me give you a boring answer on that front. But, but it's kind of more of the same. It’s more of the same. I think every time you go up in that respect, there's obviously some corrections we'll see in the public markets coming through as well, but I think that's where that bolt-on, on the private market: good solid top, top decile, top quartile investments that we can find. We don't have to do a lot. And that's the beauty of the private markets, right. Everything we do is can be super selective. But I would say it's the early innings. 

Brian Amaral 
Yeah. Well, thanks, Sanjay, for being on the show. 

Sanjay Chawla 
Great. Thanks, Brian. You know, this was great. Appreciate that. 

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