Global Head of Real Estate Applied Research, Msci
Search every verified Will Robson interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Will Robson, Global Head of Real Estate Solutions Research at MSCI, discussed the firm's recent launch of a real estate debt fund index in a February 2025 interview. He stated that the index helps to "institutionalize" real estate debt and predicted continued growth in debt flowing through alternative lending routes. Robson noted that lenders and equity investors providing "rescue capital" are using MSCI's loan-level data to identify distressed assets, particularly in markets such as U.S. CBD offices that have seen significant price corrections. In earlier appearances, Robson addressed the use of data in multi-asset-class portfolios. In a 2022 interview, he argued that investors often rely on proxy data for private infrastructure, which can lead to "sub-optimal allocations" by misrepresenting correlations and volatilities. In a 2021 presentation on climate risk, Robson distinguished between backward-looking carbon footprinting and forward-looking measures like climate value at risk, which he described as assessing the potential financial implications of future climate hazards on portfolios.
“Bringing this index to the market helps institutionalize real estate debt, and I think we'll continue to see a lot more debt flowing through these alternative routes to real estate lending.”
“We're finding that lenders and equity investors that are looking to provide rescue capital to some of these opportunities are using that loan-level data set to find where those issues are.”
“However investors often use proxy data for infrastructure to determine those characteristics — often they use data from bond markets, listed infrastructure, or valuation-based data from the private markets themselves. But these data sources and proxies can often under- or overestimate correlations and volatilities and...”
“Looking at our private valuation data, this kind of data is smoothed and lagged to some extent. When you use that kind of data in a multi-asset allocation model it can dampen down the volatility and lower the correlations with other asset classes.”
Will Robson, Global Head of Real Estate Solutions Research at MSCI, discusses the power of data in managing real estate debt strategies in an exclusive interview during Europe GRI 2024. 🔗 Find out more about GRI Club Europe and join the club to network with the industry’s most senior players: https://www.griclub.org/club/real-est...
Will Robson, at MSCI, discusses some of the key points from a recent blog, Assessing Private Infrastructure in a Multi-Asset-Class Portfolio, such as misconceptions surrounding private infrastructure assets and how having the right data can help investors understand return characteristics and allocate capital.
Will Robson (MSCI): Measuring climate risk of real estate portfolios | European ESG Forum (15 June 2021) EVENT LINK: https://www.property-forum.eu/forums/... MORE INFO, OTHER EVENTS: https://www.property-forum.eu/forums / property.forum.events.and.news
In this short video, Will Robson, Head of Applied Real Estate Research at MSCI shares his views on how and why the industrial sector was “the top ranked sector in most of markets around the world”. Watch to learn more.
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