Will Robson on data proxies
From MSCI’s Will Robson on private infrastructure’s role in a multi-asset-class portfolio · · Institutional Real Estate, Inc.
“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 you can end up with sub-optimal allocations.”
On , Will Robson, Global Head of Real Estate Applied Research at MSCI, spoke about data proxies during MSCI’s Will Robson on private infrastructure’s role in a multi-asset-class portfolio on Institutional Real Estate, Inc..
About Will Robson
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.